Storing pdf, word documents and excel documents on database

[primagic]

I need to create a system where users can logon and download any pdf's, word documents or excel spreadsheets related only to them. I can create the login/authentication side of things but I have been reading articles about the best way to store binary data like pdf's. Should I do it on the SQL database or in the file system.

They also want a public section with a list of all their newsletters (stored as pdf's) that anyone can download. I want to allow the business to upload a newsletter and it displays in the list.

Any suggestions on best practice or links to websites that would show me how to implement this.

Thanks

 

[jmeckley]

i have designed systems before that create/store/read files on disk. they are a pain to manage if the files are not within the control of IIS. if the files exist within the virtual directory for the website management isn't too bad. if you store the files outside of the IIS virtual directory there are all kinds of security details you need to be aware of.

storing to a db resolves this, but then you have a memory issue. if you are not careful saving & loading multi-mb files can crash the system with OOM errors.

in either case I would use a controller (mvc) or generic handler (webforms [ashx]) to manage file access. this makes it easy to introduce logging and security to the documents.

Jason Meckley
Programmer

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