I'm writing a document management application whereby users will be able to scan documents into the application. Then from within the applicaiton the users will be able to access the scanned documents.

So the debate is whether I should store the image directly in SQL Server (7.0) or simply store the path to the image and put the image on a network folder.

I have heard people recommend storing only the path and not the image itself but I don't know the reasons.

Obviously the database would be quite large but can't SQL server handle it? Backups would have to be performed either way so... I suppose if the database was corrupted then all images would be lost as opposed to single image files being corrupted on the harddrive.

I guess I'd like to hear what others have done in the past, their opinions, etc.

Thanks in advance.