I had attended a SharePoint conference where i heard an inference that there may be a hotfix or an update to SharePoint which allows for objects such as a document or ISO files to continue to be housed on a file based share, yet appear to exist in SharePoint. After some fervent emails and a whole lot of digging, here is what I was able to come up with.
A Microsoft Knowledge Base article contained the first hint 938499 . The is “An external storage API is available for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0″. This external storage API requires the installation of the following Hotfix 937901 .
The limited information on this knowledge base article created another flurry of emails which resulted in the following information which was located on MSDN ”External Storing of Binary Large Objects (BLOBs) in Windows SharePoint Services“
The MSDN article describes how to use the (BLOB) store provider (EBS Provider) interface, ISPExternalBinaryProvider, which will allow the storage of BLOB data in a location that is external to a SharePoint content database.
The article goes on to explain how Microsoft SQL Server is a highly efficient storage medium for highly structured data. The issue is that SQL may not always be the best option for storing unstructured binary data. This type of data does not lend itself to the efficient query and storage that is inherent in SQL Server. The solution here is to use external storage to function as an External Blob Store (EBS).
While at first read it appears that you may finally have a solution for those ISO and video files there are a number of caveats that should be understood some of which I have highlighted below.
· Version History is not maintained
· When a file is updated or saved the current externally stored file becomes orphaned
· Lazy Garbage collection will need to be implemented and can be resource intensive
· Compatibility with future versions of Office and SharePoint are not guaranteed
· External Blob Storage is only implemented at the scope of the farm
· EBS must be installed and configured on each Front-End
· Data Recovery and Backups may need to be re-engineered to support the new storage medium
While the EBS provides an additional set of functionality you should approach it carefully and implement and plan with all of the issues that this feature may introduce. However, at least there is a way with some thought that may resolve an issue that has plagued many an organization with wanting to store additional files in SharePoint.
Filed under: SharePoint | Tagged: Storage
[...] one of the worst articles he had seen. And last week Adam Woodruff also published results of his research about keeping SharePoint files outside SQL database. This hotfix basically exposes an API for anyone who cares to develop a solution [...]