From: "Geo." 

This person who you are worried will move the files, would need to have
delete access to the files. If this same person has delete access to the db
then aren't you afraid they will mess with that as well? I agree it is
possible to break the setup by moving the files but it's also possible to
fix the system by moving them back or running a query to fix the pointers.

I do understand how storing in the database simplifies the security and
maintenance aspects, but that's only a problem for the initial setup, once
it's done it's done and the filesystem security is at least as flexible as
db security, no?

There are other advantages to storing just pointers, if the load becomes
too much or you need more disk space or some other physical limitation of
the machine the pointers can quickly be changed to point to the files on a
second server. Another advantage is if someone deletes a recording, you
could just restore that one recording from the backup tape, you can't
restore anything if it's stored in the database because that requires
restoring the database and you then lose all transactions since the backup
was made.

Geo.

"Thees Peereboom"  wrote in message
news:3hql0v8qpgoq0gqsvdm9ina5e36pjmohd6{at}4ax.com...
> Geo,
>
> In general I dislike storing pointers to files in the filesystem. Not
> because it won't work, but in general because there will always be
> somebody or something that moves the actual files to another location,
> change the securitysettings on this specific directory (so that the
> database-user no longer have access) or whatever. The result is that
> the stored pointers become useless.
>
> - Thees Peereboom

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