10.1. Introduction

10.1. Introduction
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In the past, most database applications dealt with data rows consisting of simple alphanumerical fields. But today, there is an increasing demand to be able to store and manipulate complex data. Complex data is imminent not only in multimedia applications for the Web, but also in specialized application domains such as document- and workflow management.

Most relational DBMS vendors have added the capabilities to manipulate binary large objects (BLOBs) in the database. However, in many cases BLOBs are still not a viable option:

If the application uses a RDBMS or JDBC-driver without BLOB-support,
If BLOB-support is too slow or even buggy, or
If the files should be accessible without using a database layer. For instance, imagine a web content management system placing files (images, pdf's, applets, etc) directly into the Http-Root of the server.

DbForms addresses all of these situations: On the one hand, it supports the upload (and download) of files into classical BLOB fields, and on the other, it supports a file-system approach, allowing database-driven management of files outside of the database. (Depending on your RDBMS, a binary large object is called a BLOB, IMAGE, etc.)