I am a beginner at SQL Server, data storing and web technologies so I don't know how to accomplish what I try to achieve. I am a hobby C# programmer and let's pretend that my program allows you to enter a text, like an article, so its a huge basic string.
I am using SQL Server 2014 Express, and I know that it is possible to set it accessible for other users through the internet. Currently I only have small amount of data in it. Because I have read on the internet that it is never a good a idea to store e.g. a huge string in it and it's not the way to go.
I've heard that you could save the storage location of that string object in the SQL Server database and access it with that.
So that is my question if this way above is a good working solution. So that I save data e.g. in a VM and make this VM accessible for the internet with user identification and the SQL Server database gives you the information to connect to the VM's data and the information about the storage location of the requested object. I want users to be able to up- and download data from other users but all the data is in one public place. (like a VM on my pc or a different pc)
As I am a student, I don't have money for a web service or web server but I am curious about your opinion to the whole subject. I don't want any code from you, just the idea about the way of global data storing/sharing these days.
SQL Server is a database so yes, it can hold information (even a huge string which would be a data type called varchar(max) or nvarchar(max) depending on if you need it to hold other languages. If you are putting the code on a web server and then a SQL Server in a VM though I wouldn't give permission to the VM to the internet, I would just give it permission to access the web site and have the website put/pull information from the database. You might want to look into something like SQLite though - SQL Server could be overkill if you are only looking to store one string.
SQLite is free so you wouldn't have to pay for it. Pretty much any database can store images as a binary object so you can do that in SQL Server or SQLite. A tutorial for SQLite is here: https://www.codeproject.com/Articles/196618/C-SQLite-Storing-Images
MySQL is another option - it really just depends on how robust you need the server and what you are attempting to do with your web code as to what would be the best fit.