More SQL Server 2008 FileStream Fun

Ravi S.Maniam's Blog  - FileStream Data Type : SQL Server 2008

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Till the date people have been creatively inventing their own mechanisms to store unstructured  data, we are not trying to put the end to the creativity but rather we are proving a new Robust data type that can help people in storing the unstructured data like bitmap images, text files, videos, audio files etc. in a single data type which is secure, more manageable and the among the best of features, the best is that it is very friendly to use. So the expected results are Happy DBAs, Happy Developers and Happy Users.

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FILESTREAM is going to solve all such problems. Applications can leverage the rich streaming APIs and performance of the FileSystem at the same maintain a transactional consistency between this unstructured data and structured data with security. Today much of the data is created in the unstructured way such as text documents, videos, images, spreadsheets etc. This unstructured data is often stored outside the database, separate from its structured data most of the time in the creative way like described in the above paragraph. This separation can cause data management complexities. Or, if the data is associated with structured storage, the file streaming capabilities and performance can be limited. FILESTREAM integrates the SQL Server Database Engine with an NTFS file system by storing varbinary(max) binary large object (BLOB) data as files on the file system. Transact-SQL statements can insert, update, query, search, and back up FILESTREAM data. Win32 file system interfaces provide streaming access to the data. FILESTREAM uses the NT system cache for caching file data. This helps reduce any effect that FILESTREAM data might have on Database Engine performance. The SQL Server buffer pool is not used; therefore, this memory is available for query processing.

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This is a nice post going from concept to usage of the new SQL Server 2008 FileStream attribute...

 

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