Jayant,

A basic rule is keep large payloads on the file system and not stored as a database object. If the database design is not overly complex, consider using a flat file database design to store the meta-data that describes the media files. Then you can contain the meta-data and the data together within the file system vs. on the file system and a relational store. This combination has lots of infrastructure benefits; if you have to replicate to another site all of the data is in one place so a single mirror contains "everything" vs. just the data and not the meta-data, which is another replication event. The same for backup, one backup of the file system contains everything vs. backing up the data and the meta-data. DR, BC all becomes less painful and costly. There are many flat file databases that you can use; many have ODBC access; web services interfaces, etc. and there is no reason why you can't export key fields to a relational database if it's needed for more transactional type access. Use the best of both worlds, but large payloads, definitely store on a file system.

Good Luck,
Peter
May 2009