Storing Documents on SQL Server

[asim_ghani@yaho]

I recently got asked by our director to look into capabilities of storing documents data like MS Word and Text file to SQL Server.

Based on my knowledge I think you can only use TEXT data type for such need but it is not good in performance and doesn't support full functionality that varchar does which is limited to 8000 characters.

I would like to know if we have any other options specific to SQL Server? Any help would be appreciated.

-Asim

[andi_g69]

You can use BLOBs for storing files in a SQL Server DB. The datatype of the fields is image in this case.
However it is a very inefficient way of storing and retrieving documents.
The better way is to store the files in the file system and use a SQL table which holds the file info, e.g. paths.

[asim_ghani@yaho]

Thanks Much!