Nice article, but I have a couple of questions/suggestions:

1. Are there any tests demonstrating the performance difference between FILESTREAM and traditional VARBINARY(MAX) columns? I've seen mention of varbinary being cumbersome in SQL2000 and older, but I was under the impression that it was much better in SQL2005.

2. Files can be accessed through the file system, but is this recommended? For example, would it be acceptable for a web site to directly access FILESTREAM files on the file system? Or are they just there in case someone wants to manually eye-ball one of them?

3. How can I convert existing varbinary(max) columns to use FILESTREAM? Will a simple ALTER TABLE do it?

4. What is the *PRIMARY* motivation for FILESTREAM? Is it for performance, or for accessing DB files from the file system?

Thanks again for taking the time to write the article. It was very informative and obviously got me thinking.

Scott