upload files into sql server db

[Andy]

My users need to store and retrieve various files (pdfs, docs, jpegs
etc). I am developing an asp.net 2.0 web application, with SQL server
backend. I've been looking at my best options and am quite new to web
development. I am thinking about this process:

1) Upload the doc
2) zip it
3) Store in the db / on the server

Can anyone give me some advice and pros and cons on the following:

* Storing the file in the database vs storing it on the server
* Zipping the file prior to storing it

I was looking into how to compress files and found that using
GZipStream seemed to make some files larger, so I wonder how much point
there is in that! But I am hoping to slow down the growth of my
database if possible as there are potentially a lot of files that will
be uploaded.

Thanks very much

[Darren Kopp]

cons to storing in database - your database file is going to get very
large very quickly. If you are concerned about the size of your
database file, store the items on the system, not as BLOB types in Sql
Server.

Here's another question - are your users going to be downloading the
zip and then opening it? When you think about it, PDF's and Images
already do compression, so zipping won't actually do to much to them.
Documents will benefit from zipping, though if you are only zipping 1
document, then storing it, that may be over kill. For groups of PDF's,
images, and documents, you may see a benefit from zipping. Also, you
would only want to zip together groups of items that are requirements
of each other, items that are related in some way. You don't want to
just zip together lots of random files to conserve space.

I would do the following -

1 - Upload to server (1 or multiple items)
2 - If multiple items, zip and save to server. if single item, save to
server
3 - save location (relative or absolute) to database with details about
what item is (like given name, etc)

then when you access the file, you just load the location stored in the
DB. Also, by just having text in the DB, with your database
maintenance plan, when you compress the DB file, it will compress much
better than if you had binary data inside of it.

HTH,
Darren Kopp
http://blog.secudocs.com/

[Andy]

Thanks for your reply Darren, I think I'll do as you suggest - keep on
the server and zip if in a group.