Blobs also beat files when transactional consistency is a bigger concern than performance. There's also SQL Server's FILESTREAM attribute, which is rather inte

Blobs also beat files when transactional consistency is a bigger concern than performance. There's also SQL Server's FILESTREAM attribute, which is rather interesting. It tells the engine to store the data as files on the back-end. In theory that combines the best of both worlds, though I haven't had many good chances to poke at it yet.