I have an application that lets users upload pictures. These pictures are
stored in different folders depending on the user ID (of the user that it
belongs to). The path can be figured out dynamically by knowing the user
ID. However, the programmer that's coding my application has decided to
save the full path into the database.

Upside that I see is, if there's a huge load of traffic I can see how it may
be good for performance, since you don't need to dynamically figure out the
path.

The downside though, is that this leads to database bloat, and I'm not sure
if that will cause the database performance to decrease. Also, whenever the
system path is updated, a script needs to go through the database and update
everything to reflect the new path.

So, if you can give me your input on this, I'd greatly appreciate it. Is
this a good, or bad way of designing a database?

Please do not multi-post! You have replies to at least two of your other
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David Portas
SQL Server MVP
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