Before SQL Server 2008 release, the process of managing and storing unstructured data was very poor and complex.
Earlier Approaches of Storing Unstructured Data
Before the release of SQL server 2008, there were two approaches of storing unstructured SQL data. The first approach was of storing data in a VARBINARY or IMAGE columns. This type of approach had transactional consistency and also reduced data organizing complexities, but it was performance based. The other types of approach was to store unstructured data as disk files and to save the file location in the table along with some structured data linked to it. The second approach was good in terms of performance, but did not ensure transactional consistency problems.
FILESTREAM Features ' Efficient & Effective Storage of Unstructured Data
The FILESTREAM feature was introduced with SQL Server 2008 database for managing and storing unstructured data efficiently. This new feature allows storing of BLOB data (like video, images files, word documents, music file etc) in the NTFS (new technology file system) file system. It ensures transactional consistency between the unstructured data stored in new technology file system (NTFS) and the structured data stored in tables.
FILESTREAM Corruption Error 7904
Sometimes, when you try to restore MS SQL Server 2008 database (MDF & NDF files) from transaction log backups, database gets corrupted. You fail to perform restoration of SQL server database and thus MDF or NDF files become inaccessible resulting in database loss. Under such types of problem, you might encounter the error: ' FILESTREAM corruption - missing files, error 7904.' At that time, if you want to regain access of your mission critical MDF files, you must have to perform SQL database recovery process using appropriate SQL server database recovery software.
