Is it a bad practice to store large files (10 MB) in a database?

Posted by B Seven on Programmers See other posts from Programmers or by B Seven
Published on 2012-05-29T13:18:27Z Indexed on 2012/05/30 16:59 UTC
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Filed under:

database

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database-design

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mysql

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file-handling

I am currently creating a web application that allows users to store and share files, 1 MB - 10 MB in size.

It seems to me that storing the files in a database will significantly slow down database access.

Is this a valid concern? Is it better to store the files in the file system and save the file name and path in the database? Are there any best practices related to storing files when working with a database?

I am working in PHP and MySQL for this project, but is the issue the same for most environments (Ruby on Rails, PHP, .NET) and databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL).

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