Oracle-L: RE: Serving BLOB from the database

From: DENNIS WILLIAMS <DWILLIAMS_at_LIFETOUCH.COM>
Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2002 13:49:30 -0800
Message-ID: <F001.004C3447.20020829134930@fatcity.com>

Manav - I believe that serving images from BLOBs in the database imposes a significant load on the database, as opposed to simply keeping pointers to O.S. files. Operating systems are pretty good at this sort of thing or, as you mention, the Web server. So this is not an issue to be taken lightly. The key question I heard from an expert was "are you manipulating the images while they are stored?". In other words, is there any inherent advantage in having them in the database?

Dennis Williams
DBA
Lifetouch, Inc.
dwilliams_at_lifetouch.com

-----Original Message-----
Sent: Thursday, August 29, 2002 10:44 AM To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L

Hi,

I'm sure there has been discussion in the past about the same, but I'm more interested in the feasibility/performance of serving images (stored as BLOB) from the database.

For a large multi-tier application (client, web-tier, application, database), with about 5 million records upfront (possibly an image associated with each of them), about 300 concurrent users expected, would the gurus recommend serving images from the database? 1.1 The images will not be served in bulk, but one per request (only on the details page would the user get to see the image).
Wouldn't it be better to serve images from a dedicated box, at the web tier? This way I could just farm the web-tier and wouldn't have to worry about the images much?
Is serving images from the database scalable?
What about backups? This data would not change much (once uploaded the user would hardly make any changes).

With Warm Regards,
Manav.

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Author: DENNIS WILLIAMS
INET: DWILLIAMS_at_LIFETOUCH.COM

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