Best way to store pictures

[kburrows]

Hi,

We are getting an application that will have approx. 1200 pictures.

What would be the best way to store them?

Thanks,
Kathy

[LKBrwn_DBA]

Use a BLOB.

[kburrows]

What do you think the performance and storage requirements would be in comparing a blob to a bfile (external file)?

[ebrian]

There is no free lunch and you "may" notice some performance overhead with keeping them in the database. You should really do some performance benchmarks on your system to evaluate each method. Good thing about keeping them in the database is Backup & Recovery and Security.

[PAVB]

We are getting an application that will have approx. 1200 pictures.

My personal opinion is twelve hundred pictures is not such a big deal in terms of space and management meaning; you can do it either way.

In our shop we have an application that gets about six thousand pictures a day. We are storing pictures as external files keeping just an address reference in the database, the rationale behind it is: pictures are already stored in a disk, why bother in loading them into the database when what Oracle is gonna do is to stored them as blob segments -the way Oracle stores data "outside" the database.

[ebrian]

As was mentioned, a benefit of storing them IN the database is seamless Backup & Recovery and the security aspects that can be provided by the database.