Store Files in SQL Server or keep them on the File Server?

Question

Currently we have thousands of Microsoft Word files, Excel files, PDF\'s, images etc stored in folders/sub folders. These are generated by an application on a regular basis

Answer 1

If you upgrade all the way, to SQL Server 2008, then you can use the new FILESTREAM feature, that allows the document to appear as a column in a table, yet to reside as a file on a share, where it can be directly accessed by a program (like Word).