Working with binary large objects (BLOBs)

Introduction

You can define a BLOB as a large photo, document, audio, etc. saved in binary formats that you want to save in a database.

Saving and retrieving BLOBs in a database is more complex than querying string or numeric data.

The BLOB may be very large and if you try to move it in one piece will consume a lot of system memory and that for sure will affect your application performance.

To reduce the amount of system memory you have to break up the BLOB into smaller pieces.

There are a lot of classes that are designed for moving large amounts of binary data like BinaryRader, and BinaryWriter which exist in the System.IO namespace. In the next paragraphs, you will see how to use all of this.

Saving a BLOB value to the database

To save a BLOB value to the database we use FileStream and BinaryReader classes.

The next example will show you the process of saving a BLOB to a database.

string filePath = @"D:\My Movie.wmv";
// Open file stream for reading
FileStream fs = new FileStream(filePath, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read);
// Read file bytes into byte array
byte[] blobValue = new byte[fs.Length];
fs.Read(blobValue, 0, (int)fs.Length);
fs.Close(); // Close the file stream
// Connect to database
SqlConnection connection = new SqlConnection("Data Source=.;Initial Catalog=BlobsDatabase;Integrated Security=SSPI");
// Prepare SQL command with parameters
SqlCommand command = new SqlCommand("INSERT INTO BlobsTable(BlobFileName, BlobFile) VALUES (@BlobFileName, @BlobFile)", connection);
SqlParameter fileNameParam = new SqlParameter("@BlobFileName", SqlDbType.NChar) { Value = Path.GetFileName(filePath) };
SqlParameter fileParam = new SqlParameter("@BlobFile", SqlDbType.VarBinary) { Value = blobValue };
command.Parameters.Add(fileNameParam);
command.Parameters.Add(fileParam);
try
{
    connection.Open();
    command.ExecuteNonQuery();
    MessageBox.Show(fileNameParam.Value.ToString() + " saved to database.", "BLOB Saved", MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Information);
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
    MessageBox.Show(ex.Message, "Save Failed", MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Error);
}
finally
{
    connection.Close();
}

Retrieving a BLOB from the database

To retrieve a BLOB value from the database we use FileStream and BinaryWriter classes. The next example will show you the process of retrieving a BLOB from a database.

Note. you will see that we set the CommandBehavior to SquentialAccess when we call the ExecuteReader() method, this allows us to use the GetBytes() method of the SqlDataRader, so we can read the BLOB from the database in smaller, user-definable amounts.

string SavePath = @ "D:\\My BLOBs";  
SqlConnection SaveConn = new SqlConnection("Data Source = .; Initial Catalog = BlobsDatabase; Integrated Security = SSPI");  
SqlCommand SaveCommand = new SqlCommand();  
SaveCommand.CommandText = "Select BlobFileName, BlobFile from BlobsTable where BlobFileName = @BlobFileName";  
SaveCommand.Connection = SaveConn;  
SaveCommand.Parameters.Add("@BlobFileName", SqlDbType.NVarChar).Value = "My Movie.wmv";  
//the index number to write bytes to  
long CurrentIndex = 0;  
//the number of bytes to store in the array  
int BufferSize = 100;  
//The Number of bytes returned from GetBytes() method  
long BytesReturned;  
//A byte array to hold the buffer  
byte[] Blob = new byte[BufferSize];  
SaveCommand.Connection.Open();  
//We set the CommandBehavior to SequentialAccess  
//so we can use the SqlDataReader.GerBytes() method.  
SqlDataReader reader = SaveCommand.ExecuteReader(CommandBehavior.SequentialAccess);  
while (reader.Read()) {  
    FileStream fs = new FileStream(SavePath + "\\" + reader["BlobFileName"].ToString(), FileMode.OpenOrCreate, FileAccess.Write);  
    BinaryWriter writer = new BinaryWriter(fs);  
    //reset the index to the beginning of the file  
    CurrentIndex = 0;  
    BytesReturned = reader.GetBytes(1,  
        //the BlobsTable column indexCurrentIndex, // the current index of the field from which to begin the read operationBlob, // Array name to write tha buffer to0, // the start index of the array to start the write operationBufferSize // the maximum length to copy into the buffer);   
        while (BytesReturned == BufferSize) {  
            writer.Write(Blob);  
            writer.Flush();  
            CurrentIndex += BufferSize;  
            BytesReturned = reader.GetBytes(1, CurrentIndex, Blob, 0, BufferSize);  
        }  
        writer.Write(Blob, 0, (int) BytesReturned); writer.Flush(); writer.Close(); fs.Close();  
    }  
    reader.Close();  
    SaveCommand.Connection.Close(); 

To fully understand the concept you need to try to write this code yourself.

Note. The database and the full source code in the source code area with this article.