Decreased Performance From Using Blobs

I'm trying to store files such as pdfs in my SQL Server as blobs for a particular .NET application and I'm noticing a rather large performance hit when compared to if the pdf was simply stored in the web server's file system.





I have a pdf of 7MB. If this is on a web server it takes roughly 9 seconds to download. When I store the same pdf in my database and then write it onto the page using the code below it takes roughly 40 seconds to display. Can anyone help me to improve this performance difference? Should I not be using this method to store large files?





Dim PdfCol As Integer = 0 ' the column # of the BLOB field


Dim dr As SqlDataReader = cmd.ExecuteReader()





If dr.Read() Then


Dim mypdf(dr.GetBytes(PdfCol, 0, Nothing, 0, Integer.MaxValue) - 1) As Byte


dr.GetBytes(PdfCol, 0, mypdf, 0, mypdf.Length)


End If





Response.Clear()


Response.Buffer = True


Response.ClearContent()


Response.ClearHeaders()


Response.ContentType = "application/pdf"


Response.BinaryWrite(mypdf)


Response.Flush()


Response.Close()