Which one approach is better

Question

4.00/5 (1 vote)

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Dear All,

I am developing an application that will deal with multiple images for a single profile, for that I have two option to store image in SQL:

a) I can convert image into byte array and store it in SQL as image data type, and
b) I can change the image name whenever it is being uploaded and save it in any location and store that location's path in database

Now I am getting confuse that which approach is better, either first one or else second one even I am able to implement both.

Please let me know the advantage and disadvantage of both this will be a great help.

Thanks a lot in advance.

Best Regards
Tanveer

Posted 13-May-11 0:17am

Khan Tanveer Alam

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3 solutions

Solution 1

My two cents -

If it you have a small set of images (profile records), go for the store in local drive approach.
If you have a large set of images (profile records), go for the database.

Posted 13-May-11 0:20am

Abhinav S

Comments

Khan Tanveer Alam 13-May-11 6:22am

Hey Abhinav,

Thanks a lot for your quick response, it is really appreciated but if possible can you explain me technically who is better and why since i am going to work with a large set of images.

Abhinav S 13-May-11 6:27am

If you are talking about maintaining 1000's of profiles with pictures, then it might be useful to go for the database approach.

Khan Tanveer Alam 13-May-11 6:34am

There will be more than 10 thousands profile with multiple images for each profile. I do agree with you solution but still getting confused.

since in second solution they advocate second approach that is store in file system.

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 13-May-11 6:23am

Agree, my 5.
--SA

Abhinav S 13-May-11 6:25am

Thank you SA.

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walterhevedeich · Accepted Answer · 2011-05-13T00:22:00

Solution 2

Well I think most will agree with your second approach. Basically, the retrieval are pretty much faster than if it were saved to database. Just imagine the conversion that you need to do when you upload a 3MB file, and then retrieve it later on, as compared to just storing it in a file server, with your path in the database. Obviously, there are more processing done on the first one.

Posted 13-May-11 0:22am

walterhevedeich

Comments

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 13-May-11 6:25am

Good, but -- my 4 as I rather agree with Abhinav. Extremely big number of files will cause a problem.
--SA

Khan Tanveer Alam 13-May-11 6:31am

I think both the solutions have some distinct advantage and disadvantage, so i am requesting more and more people should share their views with a technical reason so that we can get a conclusion.

Nick Reshetinsky 13-May-11 8:00am

yes...but many social networks like VKONTAKTE.RU ( more thean 40 millions members) save profile images as files on hard drives... they spread content among a bunch of servers.. I know it's really tough for a server to contain such amount of fils but the web request would be processed faster when a whole and ready file is waiting for a client "rather than collecting file BLOB in
little chunks of 8 KB from data pages like a puzzle for each request"

Kim Togo 14-May-11 3:49am

Good answer. 5 from her.

Kim Togo · Accepted Answer · 2011-05-13T01:52:00

Solution 3

If you look at flickr.com that dealing with many pictures, then I think they save all image on file system and a database for reference to locations.

Posted 13-May-11 1:52am

Kim Togo

Comments

Khan Tanveer Alam 14-May-11 0:13am

Thanks a lot for your valuable suggestion.

Kim Togo 14-May-11 3:48am

You are welcome. Good luck :-)