integrating php with external programs; storing images in a DB
I am creating a pretty heavy duty database to house the raw data and calculated analyses of an ocean submarine at work, and there is a TON of data involved. Like, 500mb text files of all these crazy numbers. I've been able to get PHP to parse the text files fine and enter in all the boring text data, but that's just the tip of the iceberg.
The next steps are a bit daunting to me. They want integration with Matlab, such that some of the values are passed from the text file to a matlab script that will generate nice images of the data, and then this image will be uploaded to the server and linked to that data set.
I've done file uploading via PHP before, but on a very small scale. I'm thinking maybe these images shouild be stored as binary data in the database so that they're more solidy linked to the correct data set and it's all in one place. Does anyone here have any experience with storing images within a SQL database? Also, any experience with triggering external programs such as Matlab? Or even better, with Matlab scripting? Everyone says this program is easy to learn, but I'm not totally grasping it yet. At least the scripting side, I can figure out how to do stuff amually, but that doesn't matter.
For the image thing I'm more looking for opinions on whether it's better to store the images in the database or in a folder on the server with a url pointing to it in the database. For the matlab thing, I have no idea how to do something like that and would love any help at all with it. Thanks!
Oh, for some backgorund info: we are using MS-SQL (not my choice, I probably woulda went Oracle), and we've got two dual-2.8GHz Xeon Dell rackmounted servers with 2GB RAM each and gobs of RAIDed disks, running Windozew Server 2003. This data is going to be hit by scientists around the world for researchy stuff that I honestly don't understand at all, but it seems really neat! Here's the website we've made for them so far: http://reywire.com/remus (still in development, obviously).
The next steps are a bit daunting to me. They want integration with Matlab, such that some of the values are passed from the text file to a matlab script that will generate nice images of the data, and then this image will be uploaded to the server and linked to that data set.
I've done file uploading via PHP before, but on a very small scale. I'm thinking maybe these images shouild be stored as binary data in the database so that they're more solidy linked to the correct data set and it's all in one place. Does anyone here have any experience with storing images within a SQL database? Also, any experience with triggering external programs such as Matlab? Or even better, with Matlab scripting? Everyone says this program is easy to learn, but I'm not totally grasping it yet. At least the scripting side, I can figure out how to do stuff amually, but that doesn't matter.
For the image thing I'm more looking for opinions on whether it's better to store the images in the database or in a folder on the server with a url pointing to it in the database. For the matlab thing, I have no idea how to do something like that and would love any help at all with it. Thanks!
Oh, for some backgorund info: we are using MS-SQL (not my choice, I probably woulda went Oracle), and we've got two dual-2.8GHz Xeon Dell rackmounted servers with 2GB RAM each and gobs of RAIDed disks, running Windozew Server 2003. This data is going to be hit by scientists around the world for researchy stuff that I honestly don't understand at all, but it seems really neat! Here's the website we've made for them so far: http://reywire.com/remus (still in development, obviously).
