Storing img's in DB: advantages and disadvantages?

mipmip

I'm starting a complete rewrite of a contentmanager I wrote. This CM is storing his images in a mysql-table. Now somebody told me this is not recommended, but without arguments.

Can somebody tell me the advantages en disadvantages of storing images in a database vs. storing only the imagelocation in the db?

[deleted]

There are no advantages :-)

read this:
http://www.hvt-automation.nl/yapf/faq.php?cmd=viewitem&itemid=22

Anon

There are no advantages <<

I'd take exception to that :-)

Anon

I couldn't see the advantages but the disadvantages can be
1. slowdown of data access speed due to it's size and
2. consumption of space (storage media).

Anon

When you retrieving image from DB you have to connect to DB server. On busy sites too many connections can be a problem, keep your coactions on minimal

[deleted]

The only 'advantage' there is is that you don't have to worry about filenames and locations. But figuring out which file you want takes about 0.01% of the time it takes to request and transfer the file from the database server.

It looks cool, but it works out to be very un-cool.

Anon

Well, I mean, when you're doing image uploads in a multi-server environment and that image needs to be available to all servers immediately - e.g. for a news article.

You can either upload the image and then mess about with sending it via FTP to the other servers, during which of course you must generate unique filenames and check that filename isn't in use on any of your servers before proceeding. Then when you come to delete the news story, you have to locate the image on each of the servers and remove them too.

Or you can keep that image in the database and let it replicate across your servers automatically. Then, of course, when you come to delete the story, the image goes with it anyway.

Which sounds easier to you? :-)

I quite agree with the basic principle that images-in-a-database is A Bad Thing (TM) 99.9% of the time - but as a tool it has its uses.

--Mike