Olivier,

So far I havent seen anyone reporting any efficiency in oracle storing
files within the database. My experience of dealing with oracle
storing data in a clob/blob has been pretty difficult. Whereas
storing the files outside the db and accessing it as a external file
(bfiles or external tables) might be ok. Keeping it within the db has
the following disadvantages.

1. These files has to be backed up as part of the database and it
increases the size of the backup in an already big sized db.
2. Backup of these files gets the frequency of the backup of the db
which may or maynot be desired.
3. Havent tested this in a high usage environment, but if the files
are highly read/written, You might want to load test the effect of
keeping the files within the db/outside the db on the oracle's sga.
Try testing it by keeping it in a non-standard block size tbs/buffer
cache and see how much memory gets chewed up for this.

I have seen atleast 2 document managment system that uses oracle, but
both uses the database only to store data and pointers to files/images
that get stored on a filesystem that is accessible by the application
either directly or thru the db.

I guess you will have to simulate a load test to nail down the pros
and cons of this. It will be interesting to see if someone reading
this forum has had experience with this scenario.

Regards,

Shaji.


--- In psftdba@yahoogroups.com, "oliviervancauwenbergh"
<olivier.van@...> wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> I'm working as a PeopleSoft administrator on a PeopleSoft Financials
> environment and also as DBA on the underlying Oracle database(10G).
>
> We created some custom applications within PeopleSoft Financials.
> Some of these applications use the get and put attachment
> functionality to fetch or to attach a file to the PS application.
>
> Currently we store the files in 2 ways:
> - in the Oracle database
> - out of the database, in a directory structure
>
> We want to store all these files the same way, but we don't know
> which way it is recommended.
>
> Does anyone have any experience in this area? What does PeopleSoft
> actually recommend?
>
> I hope someone can help my finding an answer to this question...
>
> Regards,
>
> Olivier
>