> Yes, and for decades, it's been a bad idea for SQL Servers that grow over time. I never said storing BLOBs was a great idea, but for smaller databases, like

> Yes, and for decades, it's been a bad idea for SQL Servers that grow over time. I never said storing BLOBs was a great idea, but for smaller databases, like you say, and with small files, it is an option and it won't wreck your performance like you think in many cases. The profiler knows how to handle this, and if you query doesn't need it, they aren't going to impact it like you are saying. As always test, test, test. For large databases, that's why I meantioned FILESTREAM. Those are not in the database, they are essentially pointers to files on disk. > To make matters worse, when a new version of the file arrives, people never overwrite the existing file - they store the new version as a new row or object This may be a requirement? And if it is, you have to store it somewhere. Using FILESTREAM you are free to put the actual files wherever you want. The database column says where to find it.