EJBs, Webcontainer and *Images*...

[V. Rentschler]

Hi folks,

This is the situation: I am developing a business application with EJB3 and Glassfish as server. There will be a webshop communicating with EJBs, furthermore a Java desktop client which will be used for inserting products etc... (i.e.: the web-tier should only be used to view and order products). The database (MySQL) connection is realised via iBatis.
So far, so good, so simple. Now I have one problem: storing images.

Any suggestions how to do this properly? Storing blobs into the database will not be allowed to me by the guys who develop and run the database. (But I would be thankful for comments on that account, too).

Thanks in advance,
Val

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

Val,
There are two logical places to store images - on the file system or in the database. It sounds like your database team already made the decision for you. You might want to ask them why - just to be sure.

[V. Rentschler]

Jeanne Boyarsky wrote:Val,
There are two logical places to store images - on the file system or in the database. It sounds like your database team already made the decision for you. You might want to ask them why - just to be sure.

"Scalability"... I'm not really sure about the pros and cons of it really...
File system does sound logical, I know you can technically do it (because I actually just tried), but it's disencouraged by the specification for good reasons... so just what is the "way to go"?

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

The spec says EJBs shouldn't access the file system. Which you wouldn't. You would pass back the absolute path and the servlet would access the file system.

[V. Rentschler]

But what If I want to read and write files from the server, to display them over a desktop client..?