I know that perhaps this question could go into the DB forum, but it has a web-flavour.

I am going to be involved in building quite a large web portal this year, and am quite interested in the performance issues around storing images directly into a database.
When it comes to storing images... is it better to store my images directly in the SQL database... or in folders with the path in the database? (For a large system)

I am worried that the speed of the application may be severely affected if i store the images in the db, but perhaps i am wrong...?


Your thoughts? (those that have experience in this plz)