Can MySQL store multimedia files? Can any database?

Factual Questions
1

I am hiring a programmer to build an application that will serve and store multimedia content. It will need a database backend and I am wondering if MySQL can store multimedia (audio and video) files or if it is not powerful enough.

Also, are other database options better suited to this need?

Thanks!
I am not a programmer, so please go easy on me. :slight_smile:

2

MySQL can store binary files (which basically means any file that doesn’t contain text: images, ZIP files, MP3s, MPEGs, and so on) just fine. You use what are called BLOB fields (Binary Large OBject).

I consider PostgreSQL to be a little more generally robust than MySQL, although either should work fine.

3

Everything Mister V said, except that I think MySql goes beyond adequate, and is in fact an excellent solution for this.

4

I don’t have anything to add on the technical part, but if you’re looking for an application that works with hi-res files, you might consider getting something that is customizable that’s built just for storing files and referencing Hi-res files.

Just saying because it may actually be cheaper/easier to buy something rather than build it.

What kind of business are you in?

5

I’m more of an Oracle guy than a Mysql guy. But it’s often more trouble than it’s worth to store large filesactually in the database, unless you have a massive server for the application. The huge amounts of data it’s trying to pull through the buffers can thrash things pretty quick. Oracle has a datatype(BFILE) that’s a link to an external file stored in the file system but I don’t know if Mysql does or not.

Personally I would look toward setting up an wrapper interface, Using the database as a library look up system for where the files are stored. The wrapper would query the database for the location, then would directly access the particular file off the file system, outside of the database.

6

What Wolfman said is essentially how the semi-off-the-shelf programs I’m referring to work. They do store very lo-res previews of the files in the actual database.

7

I wouldn’t even bother with the lo-res previews. What’s the point? One system I set up just had a text field for the filename, and I handled the images with code. Worked beautifully, and of the 45,000 images in the system, maybe 75 were corrupted. I’d hate to see my database corrupted by corrupted media files.