> I am writing a web application and trying to decide how to best
>store/reference HTML:
>
> Do I store just store filenames/paths in mySQL, and just use them as
>references?

Web servers generally serve *files*. You can use a database with
active scripts, but this tends to cause more overhead per hit and
makes the client's browser less able to cache static content.

> Or, should/can I store all of the HTML text as single string variables
>within individual mySQL fields?

Consider your application and maintenance. How easy is it to *edit*
and *preview* HTML stored in a single database field?

My feeling is that databases are good at storing tables of relatively
short rows and filesystems are good at storing potentially much larger
files. You should use each for what it's good at. There are intermediate
cases where it is reasonable to go either way.

Filesystems are not generally good at storing large numbers of small
files (thousands to millions and up) in a single directory. The
lookup is slow, and the minimum block size wastes a lot of disk
space. You can use a hierarchy for this (e.g. the mailbox for
gordonb is stored as g/o/gordonb.mbox), or you can use a database.

Databases may get slow (lots of disk seeking) with large records,
especially if there is a lot of access that doesn't involve the
large field in the record.

>Any advice on this is greatly appreciated, and feel free to discuss the
>respective pros/cons.

Are transactions an issue? How important is it that the description
for item #938784 change in all locations at *exactly* the same time
(which still won't guarantee that the user's browser won't fetch some
pieces before the change and some after)?

Gordon L. Burditt