Hi all

I have been asked by my boss to work out how to get our existing ASP.Net
WebApp to allow authorised users to upload a number binary files (typically
pdf) to the system to be attached to their records.

The system is SQL2000 based at present.

Unfortunately as is the way with most things, actual hard facts and even
vague estimates are hard to come by.

It has been suggested that...
...we will allow a number of "slots" (I estimate 10-20) into which users
will be able to load their documents
...these Documents would have been provided to the users by entities beyond
our control.
...we might be willing to limit the size of these "documents" but as yet
it is unknown to what size..(I think we're screwed if they are > 2.5Mb but
I really hope they are <=100Kb)
...

We may eventually have a lot of users (180,000).
The existing system can theoretically scale well, as individual users would
not need access to any but their own record and as such we could create multiple
boxes each capable of looking after it's own set of users.
We envisage delimiting to < 10,000 users per box. (perhaps some insight here?)

So between...
10,000 users * 10 Docs * 100Kb = 10Gb
10,000 users * 20 Docs * 2500Kb = 500Gb
...In a DB

The crux of my question relates to the binary data. I have zero experience
with toring this kind of data. What gotcha do I need to look out for Scalling,
Access, Indices anything really.

Where do I start. Is this even remotely plausable?

Note... I have been programming VB.Net and ASP.Net for some time... I just
need to understand the SQL implications (I think)

Thanks very much for any help

--
Ror