Two tutorials on storing images in a database... which technique is better?

Question

I'm implementing a website where images are stored in a database. These are two tutorials that I've come across with two different ways of storing and retrieving image data.

Which one would you recommend, and why?

http://www.developertutorials.com/tutorials/php/storing-images-database-050620/page1.html

http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2002/05/09/webdb2.html?page=2

Answer 1

2nd one. The first involved creating a base64 string, and then storing it in the DB. Essentially, this means that you will have **at least** two copies of the image in memory as it marshals that base64 string. The second stores it in the DB as a blob, avoiding the CPU time and memory resources allocated to the marshaling.

Answer 2

This is just something to consider as I don't know really know the details, but I seem to remember there being some way to render images directly in websites without linking to external files. I also seem to remember this being base64. I may be way off, but if there was a way to store the images that would allow direct embedding, there may be some advantages to that.