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apollo11
Starting Member
6 Posts |
 Posted - 2001-11-28 : 22:01:00
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| When designing a Web application (such as a product catalog) where you need to save/retireve an image (jpg or gif) for each item, what is the best approach to use for storing the images? 1. Store images in SQL Server 7 table 2. Store URL in table, and actual image as a file outside of SQL Server Images need to be uploaded via web browser, and saved to the SQL ServerFor each product, need to display on Web page both text and image.Number of products could range from hundreds to thousands to hundreds of thousands.Web Server is MSFT IIS4 or IIS5 with ASP or ASP.NET Can anyone point me to sample code for uploading images to SQL Server and for displaying image from SQL Server on a web page. TIA.Best Regards,Jim Underwood |
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Merkin
Funky Drop Bear Fearing SQL Dude!
4970 Posts |
Posted - 2001-11-28 : 22:26:09
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| HiMost definitely not SQL Server. Do it on the file system. I can't stress it strongly enough. Pulling all that image data out of your SQL Server will have a big performance hit.Also, if you are dealing with lots of images, your database size will grow to be very big.A nice result of storing them on the filesystem is if you need to spread your images over multiple drives it is easy. One of the applications I work with has about 40,000 images, some of them very hi res (4mb each). We set up a separate path for each image type so we can split them across different drives when we need to.Hope that helpsDamian |
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apollo11
Starting Member
6 Posts |
Posted - 2001-11-29 : 00:19:33
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quote:
Most definitely not SQL Server. Do it on the file system. I can't stress it strongly enough. Pulling all that image data out of your SQL Server will have a big performance hit.
Thanks for your kind response.First, let me apologize for not searching the archives properly. Looks like you get this question at least once a month. Guess it was my turn.  It seems very clear from all the prior posts that it is a bad idea to store images in SQL Server.The main issue now is what is the limit on number of files per directory to not have a performance problem?BTW, this is one of the best forums on the Internet, from both a content and am implementation perspective. The UI is great!Best Regards,Jim Underwood |
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AjarnMark
SQL Slashing Gunting Master
3246 Posts |
Posted - 2001-11-29 : 13:36:01
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quote:
The main issue now is what is the limit on number of files per directory to not have a performance problem?
I think you'll find the answer to this really depends on levels of traffic, size of graphics, etc. I would encourage you to get a stress testing tool (such as WAST from Microsoft: [url]http://webtool.rte.microsoft.com[/url]) and have it track your perfmon readings for drive statistics among others. If you are expecting a lot of traffic, then you'll probably want to commit the resources like Merkin talks about and have a dedicated drive array(s).Also, you've probably already thought about this, but I would encourage you to separate the path and filename into separate fields in your SQL to make it easier to update if you move images. You might want to break it down further into Drive Letter/Server Name, path, filename, or whatever works for you. This is just for ease of future maintenance.-------------------It's a SQL thing... |
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Merkin
Funky Drop Bear Fearing SQL Dude!
4970 Posts |
Posted - 2001-11-29 : 17:05:39
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| Agree on the separate file path. What we actually do is have a table of file "types", we assign a path to each type. Then depending on the type of file we know where to look for it.Damian |
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Web Image Storage - SQL Server or File System