Content Store in Oracle as BLOBs?

[gbarala]

As I understand, alfresco stores content in two different places:

- the meta-data in a relational database.
- the data files themselves on the file system.

I have a requirement that I want to store content as BLOB's in oracle database (Oracle DB Configured with Alfresco) not in direct file system which can be achivable in P8 Filenet ECM product.

1. Let me know is this achivable or not if it is achivable let me know the advantages and disadvantages of storing content in database.
2. Let me know if we store content in Database how we can replicate the DB to other environments or is there any back up and restore mechanism is available when we store in Database.

Please share if we have any good documentation is available to get all these details.

Regards
Gopi

[mitpatoliya]

Content should not be stored as BLOB in database as there are many advantages of using filesystem to store contents

1) Easy to manage : you can point to simple any of your local filesystem folder as file storage location you can easily take backups. You can even have content store policies where you can define content life cycle which will help in automatic content archival and purging etc..

2) Highly scalable : you can allocate more space to the folder whenever you feel your content store is growing too much.

3)You can even use SAN or NAS as your content store so virtually there is no space limitation on that space can be allocated at any time.

4) Performance : contents stored in filesystem will have faster performance.
and the list goes on

One of the biggest reason for using content management systems are to get rid of such architecture where contents are stored in databases which was done typically before ECMS are introduced.Also this is one of the biggest plus point of alfresco.

[gbarala]

Thanks for the quick reply but one more doubt is what are the file system replication mechanism (what tools, techniques, methodologies) will use.

Note:- As I saw in some of the wikis/forums content can store in DB (Oracle Database) in Alfresco. Is it correct or not.

[mrogers]

Someone used to have an an oracle store implementation.   Not sure how successful it was, I asked questions but didn't get answers.  

You will find details in these forums.

[gbarala]

If content storage in DB not supported properly, Please let me know what are the file system replication mechanisms in Alfresco I mean (what tools, techniques, methodologies). I need details when we store content in Filesystem and their backups , filesystem replication etc…. What needs to be taken care when we store in Filesystem.

[bisana]

Alfresco has inbuilt replication, you need to configure thats all
"http://docs.alfresco.com/4.1/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.alfresco.enterprise.doc%2Fconcepts%2Fadminconsol..."

and also it is easy for taking DM instance backup with DB contents
thanks