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Quick Question

Posted: Sat Feb 04, 2006 11:02 am
by stebut05
Hi all,

I am in the process of adding both word and pdf documents to a database using BLOBs (hopefully this is correct). Users will be able to view documents through links on web pages. Howvever, before i add the documents, would it be possible to perform searching and editing on PDF and Word documents through a wen enabled user interface??? Thanks for any thoughts, suggestions and comments on this subject.

Kind Regards,

Steven

Posted: Sat Feb 04, 2006 11:31 am
by printf
Yes, (read/write acess) to pdf and word docs is possible. Storing pdf(s) and any type file that is of a direct download type should not be stored in the database, it's just not a good idea. The only time you should do this, is if you have no choice, such as in a shared hosting setup where you may have more database space than IO space. You create more overhead for your network. It is better to just keep a link to the data in the database and then allow the server to handle the download as it does it better than anything you could write in scripting.

yj!

Posted: Sat Feb 04, 2006 5:18 pm
by stebut05
If i store the documents as blobs can i search and edit the documents still? Could you give some further information hpw i should store the document? I thought that the user could view the PDF or Word document in a frame on the page, so that the user can still use navigation on the page. Any thoughts, advice and suggestions would be most helpful, thanks.


Kind Regards

Posted: Sat Feb 04, 2006 7:03 pm
by feyd
using the file system to store the files is generally preferred. Although there are some reasons to use a database as storage, but they don't realisticly happen often. Basically, in order to open one of these files, you would need to have a page just to load that entry from the database. This requires more processing time than it often takes for the server's hard drive to seek to the file and toss it at the user. A reason to use the database for storage is when your install of php is not allowed to write files into its folders or some other weird permissions. The thing is, a host should allow that to happen, and most often does.

Posted: Sat Feb 04, 2006 7:26 pm
by Gambler
If i store the documents as blobs can i search and edit the documents still?
You won't be able to search PDF entries (if you meant DB-wide search).

Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2006 12:18 pm
by stebut05
Thanks everyone for your help.

I would really apreciate some advice please folks. I have uploaded PDF and Word documents to the server, is it possible for me to search, edit and save PDFs and/or Word docs on the server through a UI????? If so, could someone please advide, thanks. If not, any other suggestions??? Again, thanks for all your help, advice and suggestions, i'm sure we would all be lost without all the help you offer.

Regards,

Steven