BLObs – Should I Store In Database Or in Directory Structure?

BLObs – Should I Store In Database Or in Directory Structure

I have been developing a database to replace an ageing data structure that contains 1000's of files within a directory structure. Part of the reason for moving from the old structure to a database is to avoid errors that have been caused by misnaming of directories and files, and also to extract related information more easily for use in trend analysis and other scenarios. Two of the tables contain BLObs. One has six of which four are infrequently accessed – five of them can be about 2Mb in size but may be larger. The other has four files – three of around 0.1Mb and one of around 4Mb. At a meeting this morning a consultant (cloud/web/database) said that it would be better to keep the BLObs in a file structure with the database holding pointers to them.

Having spent the last few hours Googling I am now started to get confused. Is there a right or wrong way to handle BLObs, and are there any guidelines on which method to choose?

Thank you...