Store (large) images inside or outside database?

Hi everyone,

today I need some advice on a conceptual basis:
We need to include images in our WO 5.2.3 application working
with Oracle 9.i as a database. The images may be of various kind
including DICOM images and therefore could be very different in size
(maybe from 100 KB up to 100 MB or even more).

Besides the problem of handling such variety of formats I could not
really make up my mind if we should store such large objects in the
database and reflect them with eo-properties or store them in the 
filesystem and only the pointer in the database. The images are treated 
as read only: once they were uploaded they will be stored and only be 
displayed for download/view. The image property would be put into a 
separate table to be only loaded if needed.

These were my considerations:
- memory consumption while using eos (as I understood the image-property 
would at least be hold twice: once in the eo in every editing context 
and once in the snapshot)
- backup and recovery issues of the database
- transaction management

Any comments?
Susanne
-- 
Susanne Schneider
Coordinator secuSuite Development

iAS interActive Systems GmbH
Dieffenbachstraße 33 c, D-10967 Berlin

fon    +49(0)30 69 00 42 - 05
fax    +49(0)30 69 00 42 - 10
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