Is there a way to upload images to a SQL database instead of the file folder?

For security reasons, external users are not allowed to upload files and images to our servers. I would have to upload them for them then tell them that they were there, not a very viable solution. The only other option I can think of is to have the images load to an image field in the SQL server 2005 database table.

There will be a limited number of bloggers, about 15, and they won' t be uploading pictures for every blog entry, so it should be manageable.

How difficult would it be to modify the upload file/image part of the blog module to do this?

I want to put another point of view here.

I think putting images in the database is the right thing to do.  You are going to the database anyway, so I think there is probably less IO overall.  I completely disagree that it is slow, but I would love to see evidence.

The CRUCIAL advantages are that adding/updating the image can now be transactional along with the other activity, and when it comes to backup everything is in the same place.  You can be CERTAIN that the images in the database backup go with the other data in the database backup.  When you have a database back up, plus a few random file backups you have no idea what belongs with what.

Our SQL servers databases are backed up every night.

I put images in a database for another website where they need to post pictures everyday during the summer and I haven't have any problems with response time. The site is older and probably needs updating, but it works fine. No one has complained about the download time of the images.

I do like the idea that everything is in one place. If we are having problems with one of the servers, I always have the option of moving a backup copy of the site to another one. If all of the data is in the database, I wouldn't have to worry about losing any information that has been submitted since the backup was created.