Programming Microsoft® SQL Server® 2012

Traditional BLOB Strategies

Prior to SQL Server 2008, there were two traditional solutions for combining structured table data with unstructured BLOB data: either keep BLOBs in the database (with all your structured table data), or store them outside the database (in the file system). In the former case, BLOBs are stored right inside the database. In the latter case, the database merely holds references (or, possibly, references are derived from other values in the database) that point to locations in the file system where the BLOBs actually live. Each of these strategies has pros and cons with respect to storage, manageability, performance, and programming complexity that we’ll discuss—but neither of them are intrinsically native to the core ...