Opening a file stored in a database in .NET.

Question

I am storing a Word document in a SQL Server 2005 database in a varbinary (max) column. Is there a way to open this document from a VB.NET Windows Forms application without serializing to a file first (i.e., directly from the byte array that I read from the database)?

Answer 1

Depends on what reads it. If it's Word, you probably have to serialize the file, but if it's a function or library that can take IO.Stream, then you can wrap a new MemoryStream around an array of bytes and pass that.

Answer 2

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