What are the pros and cons of storing files in a database?

Question

I\'m writing a php application and was wondering if it\'s a bad idea to store complete files in the database. Files should be around 100-200kb mostly text files (txt, doc, d

Answer 1

Pro: highly portable.

Con: you can't do anything with it using SQL (indexing, searching, etc) and you'll need to add metadata in other columns (content type, filename, etc) to improve (re)usability and maintainability.

I wouldn't do that. The disk file system is much better suited system for those tasks.