Populated gridView with thumbnails

[Matt]

Hello all i need some help,

What i want to do is to create a browser based app that can display various
thumbnails of large images stored in an sql db. The user can then click the
thumbnail to display the full image.

I was thinking about populating a gridView with the thumbnails...but i would
sooner no t have to store all the thumnail images into the db aswell. Iam
fairly new to asp.net so any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

 

[Joergen Bech]

Hello all i need some help,

What i want to do is to create a browser based app that can display various
thumbnails of large images stored in an sql db. The user can then click the
thumbnail to display the full image.

I was thinking about populating a gridView with the thumbnails...but i would
sooner no t have to store all the thumnail images into the db aswell. Iam
fairly new to asp.net so any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Actually, you *do* want to store the thumbnails as well to minimize
the amount of work to be done in delivering the thumbnail list.

You can store the thumbnails outside the database in a folder,
ready for delivery to the browser, if you like, but rendering them
on the fly from the original images is a no-no in when performance
and scalability at the server end is considered.

Delivering the original images to the client and letting the client
do the scaling in order to create the thumbnails is another no-no
due to the (unnecessary) bandwidth requirements.

Unless, of course, it is a very short list of images and you have some
Ajax stuff on the client that pops up the original image when clicking
the thumbnail, but even in such a scenario, the original image would
normally be retrieved asynchronously as needed with little noticable
delay.

Sorry, I do not have any code for you. There is plenty of code out
there, but first you need to decide on your architecture, i.e. what
your requirements are weighted against the various performance
bottlenecks and scalability issues.

Regards,

Joergen Bech

 

[Matt]

Actually, you *do* want to store the thumbnails as well to minimize

the amount of work to be done in delivering the thumbnail list.

You can store the thumbnails outside the database in a folder,
ready for delivery to the browser, if you like, but rendering them
on the fly from the original images is a no-no in when performance
and scalability at the server end is considered.

Delivering the original images to the client and letting the client
do the scaling in order to create the thumbnails is another no-no
due to the (unnecessary) bandwidth requirements.

Unless, of course, it is a very short list of images and you have some
Ajax stuff on the client that pops up the original image when clicking
the thumbnail, but even in such a scenario, the original image would
normally be retrieved asynchronously as needed with little noticable
delay.

Sorry, I do not have any code for you. There is plenty of code out
there, but first you need to decide on your architecture, i.e. what
your requirements are weighted against the various performance
bottlenecks and scalability issues.

Regards,

Joergen Bech

Thanks for the quick reply Joergen.... i hadn't given much consideration to
the bandwidth and other issues....(like i said im new). The full size images
will be scans of A4 size, i dont know exactly what the average file size is
going to be, but it is likely to be several MB. Whats more there will be
hundreds, if not thousands of these images with more images being received
all the time. The browser based app is simply going to be a read only display
of the images, another app has already been made for processing the scans.

I suppose rendering the thumbnails on the fly is a bad idea.

I had read up a little on the idea of storing images in a file on the
server...but i think it might be best to keep the thumbnails tied to their
parent images (already in sql db)?

This will mean creating a thumbnail of each image as they come in??
Would you think that this i the best way?

I have found some info on how to display thumnails in a gridView and then
show the full image from the thumbnail...i think i will just assume that at
thumbnail is stored alongside the the parent image.

This may be a little out of my league at the moment......its not urgent as i
was simply asked to do a little research on what might be the best way to go
about it.

 

[Lloyd Sheen]

Thanks for the quick reply Joergen.... i hadn't given much consideration
to
the bandwidth and other issues....(like i said im new). The full size
images
will be scans of A4 size, i dont know exactly what the average file size
is
going to be, but it is likely to be several MB. Whats more there will be
hundreds, if not thousands of these images with more images being received
all the time. The browser based app is simply going to be a read only
display
of the images, another app has already been made for processing the scans.

I suppose rendering the thumbnails on the fly is a bad idea.

I had read up a little on the idea of storing images in a file on the
server...but i think it might be best to keep the thumbnails tied to their
parent images (already in sql db)?

This will mean creating a thumbnail of each image as they come in??
Would you think that this i the best way?

I have found some info on how to display thumnails in a gridView and then
show the full image from the thumbnail...i think i will just assume that
at
thumbnail is stored alongside the the parent image.

This may be a little out of my league at the moment......its not urgent as
i
was simply asked to do a little research on what might be the best way to
go
about it.

Thumbnails can be built quickly on the fly by Asp.Net and delivered via
response object. The following article should be of interest since it shows
how to get best thumbnail with best size. Even if you want to pre-create
the thumbs this is a good way to go.

LS