Re: Un Structured Data -- Sore In Side Database or Out Side Database?

I absolutely agree with Carel-Jan.

I have worked on a project for an insurance company that also decided to archive their scanned documents inside an oracle database. We decided to use Oracle Intermedia as well, for the ability of the database to understand (and thereby validate) the scanned TIFF documents. Now, 3 years later, the system I've built still runs and is now holding 100's of 1000's totalling more than a TB of image data. Performance still flies. Oracle is built to handle such things.

Side note #1: Consider using 11g if you're looking at a fresh install. A cool new feature it has is Securefiles, which is a new implementation of the LOB datatype, which is used by Oracle to store unstructured data. Definetely worth a look! And if all you need is a dedicated database that handles your documents, you probably won't hit too many "fresh release bugs", if any.

Side note #2: If you're concerned about DB size -- consider the filesystem size you would need to store the docs in individual files. Intermedia has some storage overhead, as does a regular large object in the database. But compared to the size of the documents you would usually store it's really not of any concern. And compared to the benefits you get (transactional control, easy backup & restore, etc etc).

My vote definetely goes along with Carel-Jan's: IN the DB :-)

Stefan

On 11/6/07, Bob Robert <mssql_2002_at_yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Gurus
>
> Is there any best practice where to store unstructured data? Is it
> inside of the database or our side of the database? I know keeping in
> side DB would force to increase DB size very rapidly. Please comment
> based no your experience
>
> Thanks
> Bob
>
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Stefan P Knecht
Consultant
Infrastructure Managed Services

Trivadis AG
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