We've been using filestream storage for an app we've written in C#.net. I have some questions:
1. It looks like C# code retrieves filestream data from SQL then uses Windows IO to actually retrieve the file. Is this the most secure? We tried turning off Filestream for file I/O access so the only way you could get the data was through SQL but this produced an error.
2. We changed the login we use for accessing SQL Server to use SQL authentication only. Once we did that we lost the ability to access filestream data via C# - I assume because we no longer running with a domain account that had permissions on the folder.
3. We found a white paper from MS that suggested SQL Server logins cannot be used to access Filestream data. That seems to suggest the choice to enable filestream for file I/O access shouldn't be optional.
We are trying to produce an application that is as secure as it can be while being easy to manage by users with little or no SQL experience. We may need HIPPA like ability to restrict data access. We don't want anyone with the ability to browse folders to open up the files we've saved in filestream. At the end of the day, maybe filestream isn't the best choice for our storage...