Some links for my research (when writing this a few years back, I had not done a lot of SQL Server BLOB work for a while, so I missed a lot of interesting progress).
As of SQL Server 2008, one can use FileStream, which SQL Server installs on an NTFS file system local to the SQL Server instance, but is accessible over the SQL Server API. It benefits from a lot of SQL Server features (including transactional and backup related).
As of SQL Server 2012, FileTable has extended FileStream, which makes it even easier to access the files from Windows applications.
Over the years, FileStream and FileTable has improved a lot.
Some links to get a feel:
- https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/sqlserver/en-US/b1e33aab-73e8-4f05-bc70-544dccea1c0d/storing-documents-in-sql-database?forum=databasedesign&prof=required
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/relational-databases/blob/filestream-sql-server?view=sql-server-2017
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/relational-databases/blob/filetables-sql-server?view=sql-server-2017
- https://www.jitendrazaa.com/blog/sql/sqlserver/export-documents-saved-as-blob-binary-from-sql-server/
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/relational-databases/blob/compare-options-for-storing-blobs-sql-server?view=sql-server-2017
- https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2863559/any-succesful-document-management-sytem-application-using-documents-intensively
- http://www.filestreamsystems.co.uk/backup-filestream-edms.htm
- https://kohera.be/nl/blog/sql-server-nl/overview-working-files-sql-server/
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/relational-databases/blob/create-a-filestream-enabled-database?view=sql-server-2017
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/relational-databases/blob/create-a-table-for-storing-filestream-data?view=sql-server-2017
- http://dba-presents.com/index.php/databases/sql-server/64-filestream-performance-test
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/relational-databases/blob/filestream-compatibility-with-other-sql-server-features?view=sql-server-2017
–jeroen
