This is a follow-up to another question I asked earlier today. I am creating a desktop app that stores rich text documents created in WPF (in a RichTextBox control). The app uses SQL Compact, and up until now, I had planned to store each document in a binary column in the database.

I am rethinking that approach. Would it be better practice to store each rich text document in the file system, rather than saving it to the database? I figure I could put the documents in the same folder with the database, then store a relative path to each document in its database record, along with other information about the document (tags and so on).

I'd like to know some pros and cons of that approach, along with ideas of what is generally considered best practice for this sort of thing. Thanks for your help.