Avatar image: store in database or on CDN?

Question

Avatar image: store in database or on CDN?

Ps( avatar is the users profile photo)

Answer 1

Why store it yourself when you can just use http://en.gravatar.com/ or similar like Stack Overflow uses?

Answer 2

If you store in database, the image file are uncacheable, because user browser will cache the image file by the link so that it don`t have to download the file again.

Normally, user avatar files are store in file dictionary, so it have a permalink for the image file.

You can use CDN to accelerate the loading speed and save the bandwidth of user avatar.

Answer 3

Both ways have their advantages.

Storing images in the file system is of great advantage for applications that have:

• Small and simple logic
• Images that are static and doesn’t change very often
• No concern for security
• Extremely large images such as maps

Storing images in SQL Server is of great advantage for applications that have:

• Highly sensitive image data such as medical x-rays or court evidence where security is extremely important
• High availability requirements
• Maintainability requirements
• Very large size (such as a HR system with more than 200,000 employees with very fast movement of such as rehire and resignation)