[d503]

Incidentally, SQL Server 2008 has a FILESTREAM type which integrates with NTFS to give you streaming access to BLOBs (you can even work with them via Windows file handles). MSDN has a pretty thorough (and I thought interesting) technical article on them. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc949109(v=sql.100)....

[junto]

Interesting. Thanks for linking to this. Notably the article states a recommendation / constraint:

The recommendation for using FILESTREAM is that the individual units of BLOB data be 1 MB in size or higher.

Though, the benefits when that is the case, look mighty impressive.