Windows Media Server Streaming from database

Question

Is it possible to somehow set up WMS to stream the content from a database only using Windows Server 2003 Standard edition?

I know it can be done using custom-plugin data source but that is only enabled with Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition.

Answer 1

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but your best bet is probably:

1. Maintain copies of your data outside of the database (I don't know the details of your setup, so this may defeat the purpose of what you're trying to do). Basically, keep a file cache of the content you want to stream and write an application to keep the file cache synchronized with the database.
2. Switch to Windows Server 2008. The Web Server and Standard editions for 2008 support custom plugins and should be much more affordable than the Enterprise editions (I believe the Web Server edition is under $500).

Maybe someone else has some clever solution, but these are the only options I'm aware of.

Answer 2

There is nothing that ships out of the box but WMS does support additional custom plug-ins. From a performance perspective you might want to consider why you need to do so. The easiest way in my mind would be to write an HTTP wrapper around the database and use the built-in HTTP streaming data source. The knowledge and skills required to write the HTTP wrapper is more plentiful than writing WMS plugins. If you do have a use case for this consider SQL Server 2008's filestream feature as it is designed for giving you the relational power with file system performance.