Doc Management: In SQL Server or in Folders?

[DraguVaso]

Hi,

I'm working on an application (VB.NET 2003) that has to manage Clients,
suppliers, Products, Offers, Delivery's, Transportations, ...

The users have a lot of documents to manage (faxes, mails, word-docs, pdf's)
etc.
Should I store the electronical versions of these documents in folders on
the network, or in the Sql Server Database (2000)?

Does anybody knows the pro's and the contra's? Is it practicly doable to put
everything in the Database?

Pieter

 

[JV]

Pieter,

You may be reinventing the wheel, so to speak. There are a number of
existing products that could do this for you or your client, and it may well
be cheaper to go that route. If it's a large company with lots of
documents, they may want to consider Hummingbird's DM server (DM = document
management, see www.hummingbird.com), but there are several competitors as
well, some perhaps better suited for smaller companies with less complicated
needs.

Microsoft's Sharepoint Server also has some document management features.

 

[Cor Ligthert]

Pieter,

An answer from which I don't know if you know that already.
It is practical to do, to set "everything" in a database.
You can save it than as a blob and as well use zipping while doing that.

You can use for "everything" one routine.
This can be a very efficient way of storing what you call "whatever".

However the side effect is that you need around that a kind of directory
system.
Although that the directory system at the moment looks maybe terrible are a
lot of clients used to it now (while they tell now of course that it is
awful).

I hope that this gives an idea

Cor