Reading SQL Varbinary Blob from Database

Question

I am working on saving files to sql blob to a varbinary(max) column, and have got the save side of things working now (I believe).

What I can\'t figure out is how to

Answer 1

You will need to use a SqlCommand to retrieve data when data is stored in a varbinary(MAX) column unless you use a FileTable, which allows access to the contents via UNC path similarly to regular files stored on a file system, but managed by SQL Server.

If the size of the blob may be large, the "chunk" technique you are currently using will reduce memory requirements, but at the expense of more verbose code. For reasonably size blob sizes, you could read the entire column contents at once without a chunking method. Whether this is feasible depends on both the size of the blob and client available memory.

var buffer = (byte[])cmd.ExecuteScalar();
fs.Write(buffer, 0, buffer.Length);