tedsmith wrote:
I've done a little research on this now and it seems that there are two distinct advantges and disadvantages.

Advantages : It gets around PHP safemode file
system issues and filesystem rights/restrictions in general makeing the code a bit more portable because you don't have to think twice about the rights management of the server beyond the database. However, with XOOPS this does not apply (I don't think).

It makes backups easier because you don't have to backup a filesystem and database - just the DBase

Disadvantages : It is apparently slower to access binary data from a database rather than the file system so binary/blob data retrieval from a database can be the bottleneck of a site, especially if it has heavy traffic.

MySQl recommend useing the filesystem for what it was meant for - storing files. They mention it here:

http://www.mysql.com/doc/en/Tips.html

I think for now I'm gonna stick with the filesystem, and then if I need to in the future I'll convert to BLOBing

Cheers

Ted