IMHO, storing images in the DB is fine, but it adds overhead. You can mitigate the overhead with caching, etc. as Adam suggests, but you can't eliminate it. Do you need massive scale? Scale consists of two things- number of images and traffic level on your site. If you have millions of images, you probably do not want to store them in the database, as you will end up with an enormous database that is hard to administer. If you have millions of visitors to your site, you probably don't want to store images in the database because you want to do everything you can to tune for performance to avoid costly hardware purchases. BTW, a site like Flickr has special needs because there are many transactions against the images- adds, updates, and deletes. You think Flickr stores their images in a database? I don't know, but I doubt it.
Still, unless you have those kinds of scaling needs, you are fine with either strategy. On 2/19/07, James Smith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Is there any real disadvantage to storing images in a DB? Up until this > point all of our images are stored as images in the server file system and > the DB just stores the filename. We now have our web-server co-lo'd in a > remote location and I am using replication to keep the remote servers > database up to date. I am thinking about storing the images in the DB so > they get copied with the DB replication as well but there is something > nagging at me saying this would be a bad idea. > > -- > James Smith > > > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Upgrade to Adobe ColdFusion MX7 The most significant release in over 10 years. Upgrade & see new features. http://www.adobe.com/products/coldfusion Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/message.cfm/messageid:228378 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.5
