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

I'll offer another vote for inside the database, along with my most recent experiences with an outside-the-database document vault.

We have 3rd party developed application with the metadata in a single Oracle database and the documents stored in a globally distributed set of file servers (one master with multiple slaves). We also have a hot site for disaster recovery; all major systems are replicated at the os level to the remote site. In the case of the database document vault application, the database is replicated but thus far, replication of the file vaults has not been reliable. We can provide recovery of the database in minutes, but restoration of the files would take days.

All attempts to reliably replicate the vault files have come up at least a few files short, which of course makes it unacceptable. Some of the replication issues may be related to how the application is locking the files users have recently accessed, but during one upgrade several years ago, an unknown number of files never made it to the new server. We ended up having to keep two copies of the vault; the operational one and a preupgrade copy we could search should a file turn up missing. The really dangerous part of this configuration to me is that there is no indicator of a missing file until a user requests it, and at that point, you can't tell how long it's been missing ...

If these files were in the database, we'd have the disaster recovery covered and if the storage medium for the files goes missing, Oracle's gonna let you know really quick so you'll know exactly which backup you need.

Inside the database would be a much more secure, reliable approach.

Robyn

On Nov 6, 2007 2:12 PM, Stefan Knecht <knecht.stefan_at_gmail.com> wrote:

> 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.
> 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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