Would you store binary data in database or in file system? [closed]

The advantage of storing data in the DB is taking advantage of DB security mechanisms and reducing maintanence cost (backups, ...). The disadvantage of it is increasing DB load and consuming connections (which might be expensive for per-connection licensed database servers). If you are using SQL Server 2008, FILESTREAM might be a nice alternative.

By the way, for Web apps (or any other apps that might need streaming the data), it's usually more sensible to store data outside DB.

All this talk about doing a "select * from table" causing huge memory and/or bandwidth issues when the table has a LOB in it is a non-issue. All that is returned is a pointer to the LOB in question. Not enough reputation to put the comment in-context, but people looking at this should know it's NOT an issue.

The biggest dissadvantage if you are storing BLOBS is memory consumption. Can you imagine what select * from x would do for thousands of records with a 45k image in each?

As Mehrdad said there are also advantages. So if you decide to go with that approach you should try to design your database so that most queries return less results with BLOB data in them. Maybe for example make one to one relationships for this purpose.