What does this thing do?Handling attachments is necessary for ANY modern application. Lightswitch makes it easy to create applications, but doesn't provide an easy way to handle file attachments. SQL Server introduced a feature called FileTables in 2012. This feature allows you to store filesin the database - but not in the database. This is the best of both worlds - you get the ability to do powerful (including full-text) searches and compress, encrypt, and secure your data using the SQL Server database engine, but, you don't have a bunch of binary content junking up your database - plus, you can work with files using both SQL queries and standard File I/O code (File.Create, Directory.EnumerateFiles, etc.) or entirely WITHOUT CODE (dragging and dropping files right into the database's FileTable) - AND, IT WORKS ON THE FREE VERSIONS OF SQL SERVER(if you install and configure this feature when you install SQL Server). THIS IS NOT SUBJECT TO THE 10 GB limit. Go big or go home. This extension connects Lightswitch (2013) with SQL Server FileTables (2012 / 2014). This way,YOU CAN PUT YOUR ATTACHMENTS RIGHT IN THE DATABASE AND EASILY WORK WITH THEM. Does it work with HTML and Silverlight?Yes. It works with all clients. How do I use it?Go to the open source FileTable Services for Lightswitch Project on CodePlex for documentation, including how to get started using this extension and how to use it in code. How did you deal with really large files?I didn't. The extension doesn't return file content except a) when you use the GetNodeByID() query to get one specific file, or b) you use the SearchForNodes() query and you specifically say that you want the file content returned in the query (it's a query parameter). Other than that, you're seeing file and folder metadata, not the content itself. Even then, REALLY large files (> 100 MB) aren't really a great idea. If you're interested, leave me a note and maybe I can work on that (there are ways to handle it - but, most applications deal with smaller files such as pictures and documents, so there hasn't yet been demand for this). |