title: Base64 Encoded Data - DB or Filesystem
body: <p>I have a new program that will be generating a lot of Base64 encoded audio and image data. This data will be served via HTTP in the form of XML and the Base64 data will be inline. These files will most likely break 20MB and higher. Would it be more efficient to serve these files directly from the filesystem or would it be feasible to store the data in a MySQL database? Caching will be set up but overall unnecessary because it is likely that this data will be purged shortly after it is created and served.</p>
  
  <p>i know that storing binary data in the DB is frowned upon in most circumstances but since this will all be character data I want to see what the consensus is. As of now, I am leaning toward storing them in the filesystem for efficiency reasons but if it is feasible to store them in a database it would be much easier to manage the data.</p>