• Article

Designing and Implementing FILESTREAM Storage

FILESTREAM enables SQL Server-based applications to store unstructured data, such as documents and images, on the file system. Applications can leverage the rich streaming APIs and performance of the file system and at the same time maintain transactional consistency between the unstructured data and corresponding structured data.

In This Section

  • FILESTREAM Overview
    Introduces FILESTREAM by describing when to use FILESTREAM, how FILESTREAM storage is implemented and managed, and how FILESTREAM data can be accessed.

  • Getting Started with FILESTREAM Storage
    Provides a list of topics that show how to enable FILESTREAM on an instance of SQL Server, create databases and tables to support FILESTREAM, and how to use FILESTREAM storage from within the Database Engine.

  • Using FILESTREAM Storage in Client Applications
    Provides an overview of application development that uses FILESTREAM data from the file system.

  • Using FILESTREAM with Other SQL Server Features
    Provides information about the interaction of FILESTREAM with database snapshots, replication, log shipping, database mirroring, full-text search, failover clustering, and SQL Server Express.

  • Managing FILESTREAM Data by Using Transact-SQL
    Describes how to use the Transact-SQL INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE statements to manage FILESTREAM data.

  • Managing FILESTREAM Data by Using Win32
    Describes how to use Win32 to read and write data to a FILESTREAM BLOB.

  • Designing and Implementing FILESTREAM How-to Topics
    Provides procedures that describe how to enable and set up FILESTREAM.

  • FILESTREAM Best Practices
    Provides recommended best practices for using FILESTREAM

  • About Remote Blob Store (RBS)
    Remote BLOB store (RBS) for SQL Server is an optional add-on component that lets database administrators store binary large objects (BLOBs) in commodity storage solutions instead of directly on the server. This saves a significant amount of space and avoids wasting expensive server hardware resources. RBS provides a set of API libraries that define a standardized model for applications to access BLOB data. RBS also includes maintenance tools, such as garbage collection, to help manage remote BLOB data.