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Sometimes, SQL Server gets a little opaque. Varun Singh has some tips on how to clear the waters.
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RBS To the BLOB Rescue
Yesterday , considering the needs of a document management system to handle many BLOB (Binary Large Object) documents we looked at options to store the data physically in SQL Server itself. Maurice writes in and reminds us of a new feature in SQL Server 2012 – Remote Blob Store (RBS).
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg638709(v=sql.110).aspx
RBS is like FileStreams on steroids. Instead of restricting the destination to a file system, RBS, an add on to SQL Server 2012, allows SQL Server to connect with any RBS provider allowing BLOB data to be stored external to SQL Server on remote devices, while still participating in the ACID transaction of persistence.
Now you don’t have to roll your own interface for remote storage. An interface has already been defined by Microsoft for RBS providing pretty much everything you need to utilize commodity storage capabilities. It can even work with SQL internal blob table objects or filestream data. A sample RBS driver for NTFS can be found in Codeplex according to the TechNet release.
RBS requires an SQL Server Enterprise license for the RBS SQL client storing the metadata. However, if you store the data remotely in other databases, they do not have to use the Enterprise version.
I hadn’t even heard of RBS until today. So, I don’t know the impact it may have on database backup and recovery. I would guess it would be rather light since only metadata is stored in the primary database. That might be something worth a little testing.
Write in with your suggestions for handling BLOB data in your application. Send your comments to btaylor@sswug.org.
Cheers,
Ben
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