I want to create a database of articles for my customers to read. The articles include photos and videos.

I am familiar with ASP, JavaScript and MS Access. I have an understanding of XML but have not worked with it.

What is the best way to store articles while still providing the security and organization that a database offers? I have found MS Access to be very limited in the amount of information a particular field can hold. Even using the Memo type, an article seems to be too large. The whole use of the database seems pretty cumbersome for storing large documents.

Judging by the various news sites (MSNBC, CNN, etc.), there must be some efficient way to do this.

Any suggestions are helpful.

Best regards,
sabertec2

How about using SQL server for storing data? You may think of using TEXT datatype there for storing article content.

I won't suggest you storing images in datbase, you can store the images and video files on the physical drives and use the path for that as URL in database, so that you can put up a link to that which corresponds to the article. On the maintenance part, you should ensure that you delete the files too when an article is removed.

Hope that helps.
Cheers!

_________________________
- Vijay G
Strive for Perfection

Thanks Vijay G,

I know SQL is the standard for web based database work, but I've never had opportunity to work with it. How much data (bits or characters) does a single SQL text field allow? Some of my articles are actually chapters from some of my service manuals and tend to be pretty long. Needless to say, Access is really limited, but maybe SQL will work.

I agree with you on storing the videos and photos on the drive and simply pointing to them.

Check this link - SQL server - Text and image datatypes

You may break the chapters in to reasonable size and store into multiple records, if that is too large to fit into TEXT datatype columns.

Cheers!
_________________________
- Vijay G
Strive for Perfection