We have stored all media in Sql Filestream, but now we'll need Video and Audio streaming... Will this be possible with Sql Filestream or will I have to take all of the Video and Audio out of the database?
Which technology would you use to enable Video/Audio Streaming?
WebORB
FluorineFX
Wowza (way better I think than the first two)
IIS Media (haven't looked into this yet)
When using IIS Media its not possible to store the data in a SQL Fielstream.
For further details check here.
It's possibly very similar with the rest of your suggested solutions, since all of them need to re encode the material to enable streaming (if its not in the necessary format already).
You actually have 2 problems:
Re encoding the videos into a format
that enables you to stream it via
the server platform you choose, just
for this part you need to extract
the files from the db since the
encoding tools can't be fed from a
database, even if its a SQL FileStream
Store the encoded files
somewhere the media servers can
access them, again they don't allow
a SQL Server as a data soure, they
probably have their own storing
infrastructure or use the file
system.
Conclusion:
The FileStream is extremely helpful when you have full control over server/client, but sadly not in your case.
You will probably have to extract all files from the DB.
The FileTable feature in SQL Server "Denali" (not yet released) is designed specifically for this scenario (amongst others).
There's a good overview link here: Using FileTables to Manage Unstructured FILESTREAM Data.
This will allow you to directly access and play these files through a provided UNC path without requiring any changes to the application, so you can use any of the above mentioned streaming servers.
Related
I store large files (50-500MB) in database. Once loaded by the application, it doesn't need the whole file in memory. How do i fetch table row (or specifically the installer from the row) directly into the memory while avoiding loading the entire file into ram (So a sort of a buffered download into file)?
I haven't found a solution that avoid loading the file so far. Instead i forward requests to flask server that loads the entire file, and then allows the application instance to download it into a file. However this doesn't seem like a very good solution.
You are probably looking for FILESTREAM (SQL Server):
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.
It is interesting because on SQL Server (for Windows) it can stream file data to Windows clients without having to load their entirety into the memory of the SQL Server:
The Win32 streaming support works in the context of a SQL Server transaction. Within a transaction, you can use FILESTREAM functions to obtain a logical UNC file system path of a file. You then use the OpenSqlFilestream API to obtain a file handle. This handle can then be used by Win32 file streaming interfaces, such as ReadFile() and WriteFile(), to access and update the file by way of the file system.
Do note that at this time it is not supported on SQL Server 2017 for Linux.
I'm looking for a tutorial or something that allow me to learn Presto step by step.
The idea is to start integrating file's and MSSQL, which is my knowledge area.
Unfortunately, since it is a relatively new area, I didn't find anything more than Facebook page or the Presto.io page, however it is not good enough for someone that want to start knowing the big data world from scratch.
I will appreciate your help and/or orientation in this area.
Presto has 2 primary use cases:
querying data stored in a cluster (on Hadoop's HDFS) or in a cloud (e.g. Amazon S3)
data federation, i.e. querying (and joining) data from multiple data sources (e.g. HDFS, S3, traditional RDBMS like PostgreSQL or SQL Server)
As far as SQL Server support is concerned -- Presto supports connecting to SQL Server since https://github.com/prestosql/presto/commit/072440cbb2c8df2a689c4c903dd325013eae41a0.
When it comes to querying files -- Presto uses Hive's Metastore to keep track of metadata (everything besides actually reading the data). Thus the files must reside on HDFS or S3 to be accessible (other cloud data stores like Azure's Blob are, AFAIK, not supported yet).
I have a standard WinForms application that connects to a SQL Server. The application allows users to upload documents which are currently stored in the database, in a table using an image column.
I need to change this approach so the documents are stored as files and a link to the file is stored in the database table.
Using the current approach - when the user uploads a document they are shielded from how this is stored, as they have a connection to the database they do not need to know anything about where the files are stored, no special directory permissions etc are required. If I set up a network share for the documents I want to avoid any IT issues such as the users having to have access to this directory to upload to or access existing documents.
What are the options available to do this? I thought of having a temporary database where the documents are uploaded to in the same way as the current approach and then a process running on the server to save these to the file store. This database could then be deleted and recreated to reclaim any space. Are there any better approaches?
ADDITIONAL INFO: There is no web server element to my application so I do not think a WCF service is possible
Is there a reason why you want to get the files out of the database in the first place?
How about still saving them in SQL Server, but using a FILESTREAM column instead of IMAGE?
Quote from the link:
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.
FILESTREAM integrates the SQL Server Database Engine with an NTFS file
system by storing varbinary(max) binary large object (BLOB) data as
files on the file system. Transact-SQL statements can insert, update,
query, search, and back up FILESTREAM data. Win32 file system
interfaces provide streaming access to the data.
FILESTREAM uses the NT system cache for caching file data. This helps
reduce any effect that FILESTREAM data might have on Database Engine
performance. The SQL Server buffer pool is not used; therefore, this
memory is available for query processing.
So you would get the best out of both worlds:
The files would be stored as files on the hard disk (probabl faster compared to storing them in the database), but you don't have to care about file shares, permissions etc.
Note that you need at least SQL Server 2008 to use FILESTREAM.
I can tell you how I implemented this task. I wrote a WCF service which is used to send archived files. So, if I were you, I would create such a service which should be able to save files and send them back. This is easy and you also must be sure that the user under which context the WCF service works has permission to read write files.
You could just have your application pass the object to a procedure (CLR maybe) in the database which then writes the data out to the location of your choosing without storing the file contents. That way you still have a layer of abstraction between the file store and the application but you don't need to have a process which cleans up after you.
Alternatively a WCF/web service could be created which the application connects to. A web method could be used to accept the file contents and write them to the correct place, it could return the path to the file or some file identifier.
I am using T-SQL and Microsoft Management Studio 2008 R2. I want to create a database in which I can store video files.
After google search and some reading I have learned that there is a option to use "File Stream Enable Database". It was said that this kind of database should be used only when your files are larger then 2MB. I want to store video files, so I think this is suitable for my goals.
Please, give me more information about the main difference in using BLOB and FileStream Enable database or just to store the files in a given directory and to save only the url in the database table column?
Thanks in advance.
Filestream was an interesting change when it came in for me; the bit that suprised me was Full Text Search was taken out of the operating system because it caused issues; but file stream put it back because Blobs caused issues.
Using Filestream is basically transparent to your application and it even backs the files up as if they were in the database - and thats the big benefit or cost over the save in database v save pointer in database.
You can insert files the same way as you did before and you can read them back in SQL in exactly the same way. The difference and benefit is that that SQL can take advantage of Windows system cache for reading and files saving its own resources to make other queries run quicker.
Please, give me more information about the main difference in using BLOB and FileStream Enable
database
The feature you call for is "FileStream" not "FileStream enable".
Some blogs are also around, like http://blogs.msdn.com/b/rdoherty/archive/2007/10/12/getting-traction-with-sql-server-2008-filestream.aspx
At kleast try reading the documentation before running around and have other people do your basic groundwork.
Quick q, could be a silly one given my (lack of) findings on Google so far.
I have a Database. In this database is a Table with some Data. The Data is a large BLOB but can't be compressed (for reasons out of my control).
I have an Application that talks to this Database. I would really like to be able to ensure that the Data is compressed during transit.
As I understand it, the Database Provider would handle compression etc.
Is this the case? Are there settings on common ones, say SQL Server to enable compression?
For SQL Server, I found this "connect" entry, but no: I don't think TDS is currently compressed. You could (although I don't like it much) use SQL-CLR to compress it in .NET code, but it could have too much overhead.
I know it isn't an option in this case (from the question), but it is usually preferable to store BLOBs the way you want to get them. So if you want to get them compressed, store them compressed. SQL isn't a good tool for manipulating binary ;-p Such a strategy also means that you aren't using vendor-specific features - just the ability to store an opaque BLOB.
If your database access layer does not provide compression, you can set up a VPN link between the database server and the application host. Most serious VPN solutions compress data in transit. OpenVPN is a simple and easy to set up solution for quickly creating a tunnel. Data is compressed in transit. Probably won't be as efficient as a native compression, but it's a possible solution. And you get encryption thrown in for free :).
SQL Server 2008 is the first version of SQL Server to natively support compression of backups. Pre 2008, you need to do it with third party products.