TomThomson (2/17/2014)
But I can see cases where I would want to have binary data involved in transactional consistency with other data;
To me the critical question is: Do changes/adds/deletes to the binary data require ACID compliance? If so, thou shalt put them in the database. If not, you have choices to think about.
If you use "files on file store, link in the database" (whether FILESTREAM or custom coding), I would recommend a regular process that checks validity - i.e. something you can run when you run DBCC CHECKDB to see if the links still lead to files.