Audio Files in BLOB?

[Rajesh Kapur]

Hello All,

We are building an application that will dynamically choose and pre-pend
short underwriting messages to the audio streamed over the web. We will use
SMIL files. We need to decide if the short underwriting messages are better
off stored in a the database (BLOB field?) or in a physical file with the
references stored in the database. How can we load the audio from a
physical file to the database? Is it a good idea to store audio files in the
database? Will the database storage result in a better response time? Would
anyone care to share the experience on storing audio in the database and
streaming over the web?

Thanks.
- Rajesh

[John]

MySql seems to handle fair-sized blob fields pretty well. A database I
maintain typically works with 5-10MB blobs with no troubles and fast
response time under light to moderate load.

Factors to consider before making a decision greatly depend on how heavy
the access to your database will be and how large the audio files are.
Larger files will take longer to extract from the database and into your
application (file-based would be faster since there is less overhead,
but is harder to manage and keep in sync). Have lots of RAM and tune
the cache settings, and I'd bet you will be in good shape.

John

Rajesh Kapur wrote:

Hello All,

We are building an application that will dynamically choose and pre-pend
short underwriting messages to the audio streamed over the web. We will use
SMIL files. We need to decide if the short underwriting messages are better
off stored in a the database (BLOB field?) or in a physical file with the
references stored in the database. How can we load the audio from a
physical file to the database? Is it a good idea to store audio files in the
database? Will the database storage result in a better response time? Would
anyone care to share the experience on storing audio in the database and
streaming over the web?

Thanks.
- Rajesh

[John]

MySql seems to handle fair-sized blob fields pretty well. A database I
maintain typically works with 5-10MB blobs with no troubles and fast
response time under light to moderate load.

Factors to consider before making a decision greatly depend on how heavy
the access to your database will be and how large the audio files are.
Larger files will take longer to extract from the database and into your
application (file-based would be faster since there is less overhead,
but is harder to manage and keep in sync). Have lots of RAM and tune
the cache settings, and I'd bet you will be in good shape.

John

Rajesh Kapur wrote:

Hello All,

We are building an application that will dynamically choose and pre-pend
short underwriting messages to the audio streamed over the web. We will use
SMIL files. We need to decide if the short underwriting messages are better
off stored in a the database (BLOB field?) or in a physical file with the
references stored in the database. How can we load the audio from a
physical file to the database? Is it a good idea to store audio files in the
database? Will the database storage result in a better response time? Would
anyone care to share the experience on storing audio in the database and
streaming over the web?

Thanks.
- Rajesh

[SwissCheese]

"Rajesh Kapur" <rk****@mpr.org> wrote in message
news:3f***********************@newsreader.visi.com ...

Hello All,

We are building an application that will dynamically choose and pre-pend
short underwriting messages to the audio streamed over the web. We will use SMIL files. We need to decide if the short underwriting messages are better off stored in a the database (BLOB field?) or in a physical file with the
references stored in the database. How can we load the audio from a
physical file to the database? Is it a good idea to store audio files in the database? Will the database storage result in a better response time? Would anyone care to share the experience on storing audio in the database and
streaming over the web?

Thanks.
- Rajesh

You would be better off keeping things as references. The good thing is
that you can also stream almost any video/audio type supported by Windows by
simply creating a link to a playlist file instead of the actual content. I
honestly don't know of any software that would stream directly from a DB as
it seems that would tie up the DB considerably.

[SwissCheese]

"Rajesh Kapur" <rk****@mpr.org> wrote in message
news:3f***********************@newsreader.visi.com ...

Hello All,

We are building an application that will dynamically choose and pre-pend
short underwriting messages to the audio streamed over the web. We will use SMIL files. We need to decide if the short underwriting messages are better off stored in a the database (BLOB field?) or in a physical file with the
references stored in the database. How can we load the audio from a
physical file to the database? Is it a good idea to store audio files in the database? Will the database storage result in a better response time? Would anyone care to share the experience on storing audio in the database and
streaming over the web?

Thanks.
- Rajesh

You would be better off keeping things as references. The good thing is
that you can also stream almost any video/audio type supported by Windows by
simply creating a link to a playlist file instead of the actual content. I
honestly don't know of any software that would stream directly from a DB as
it seems that would tie up the DB considerably.