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java - How to load images in memory from a domain file system?

I want to make an app that displays different images. I have those images stored on my domain. Like any domain it has a file system where i can upload different images . What i want to do is to access those images from there and to load them in memory at runtime. Is that posible or do i need to make a file transfer through a java program and store them localy and load them after in memory ? Or is there a better strategy in doing this ?
P.S: I was thinking about loading those images in a MySQL Database but as i searched i found out that it`s not recommended to do that because they are saved as large binary files and its quite expensive (as database memory gets huge and performance is lowered).

Java Webapp - Where to store Images

I created a web application using Java Spring, Hibernate, with JSP's. It's basically a blog I made from scratch, so there's an interface where I can add a new blog post with pictures.
I use Heroku to host and deploy the app.
When I want to post images in a blog post, I do:
And that image is currently stored in a resource folder right outside of 'WEB-INF'. Except, as I add more blog posts, I will have a lot of large sized pictures. I don't know where I should store these images and how I should access it. I thought of storing it in the file system, but wouldn't I have to re-deploy the app on heroku each time I add more images? Another option was having a public dropbox folder and linking the images there, but that would open up my entire dropbox directory to the public. Is there a better way to do all of this, especially managing so many large pictures?

Saving files in file system is not a scalable solution. If you add new servers for your web app the images won't be displayed correctly for any request.
You have to save your images in a distributed environment. It can be a LOB column on the database (Postgres for example) or an Amazon S3 storage system.
The access type is very different but both systems are a good option for your images. If they are big in size, S3 is the best option.

Storing large number of images database or filesystem

I am working on a project where we need to store large no of images say some 10 millions so which is the best way to store the images.Best way in terms of speed and efficient.
It is a web based project so the image retrieval should be fast.
Database
Storing images as base64 in database.
we are working on a nosql database.
File System
To make an unique id and store it under an folder.

1)Database
will require much code for processing image as using streams
Heavier load on the database server
database storage is usually more expensive than file system storage
databases win out where transactional integrity between the image and metadata are important.
it is more complex to manage integrity between db metadata and file system data
it is difficult (within the context of a web application) to guarantee data has been flushed to disk on the filesystem
2) File system
To store images on a unique id and storing it to harddisk will be a better option .
things like web servers, etc, need no special coding or processing to access images in the file system
refer http://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2008/06/30/FacebookNeedleInAHaystackEfficientStorageOfBillionsOfPhotos.aspx
also see Storing Images in DB - Yea or Nay?

There is a trade off - it will depend on your exact situation and needs. The benefits of each include
Filesystem
Performance, especially caching and I/O
Storing file paths in the database to be best.
There are a couple of issues:
database storage is usually more expensive than file system storage
you can super-accelerate file system access with standard off the shelf products
for example, many web servers use the operating system's sendfile() system call to asynchronously send a file directly from the file system to the network interface. Images stored in a database don't benefit from this optimization.
things like web servers, etc, need no special coding or processing to access images in the file system
databases win out where transactional integrity between the image and metadata are important.
it is more complex to manage integrity between db metadata and file system data
it is difficult (within the context of a web application) to guarantee data has been flushed to disk on the filesystem
Database
Easier to scale out to multiple web servers
Easier to administer (backup, security etc)
If you have a SQL 2008 DB, have a look at FileStream in this SO article - this gives the best of both worlds.
See Storing Images in DB - Yea or Nay?
Edit
See for Nosql:
Is it a good idea to store hundreds of millions small images to a key/value store or other nosql database?
Storing images in NoSQL stores

Help with storing images on a server and what to store in the database with java servlet?

I want to store images related to a particular row in my table,
So my table is called spot,
and each spot can have multiple images,
should i just store the images in a folder on the server and then store a location to that folder in a column of that row called imagesLocation?
or should there be other information encorporated?
any ideas?

You are on the right track - store the images on the file system (preferably where they can be seen by the web server), and store just a path to them in the database. This can greatly reduce I/O to your database server. Often you will just create a <img> tag with the path, so you can lead the loading/caching of these files to your webserver - which it is really good at.

Yes, you should store the file in the file system and the location of the file in the database. In my experience the database connectors perform very poorly on large pieces of binary data in the database.
You should store all the meta-information you need in the database so you don't need to rely on the OS for anything else than storing the raw bytes.

What would a good approach be for file storage and retrieval?

I am working on rewriting a Java web application to Rails which relies heavily on collections (100's or 1000's) of large (50-100MB) TIFF files. In the Java version, the user specifies a local root path (such as a mounted SAN drive) for these files in the application configuration, and they are read by the application using these paths. The application also writes new files to those paths.
Essentially, users must be able to add files to the application in two ways:
1) Specify a storage location as the 'root' for a collection of TIFFs, which could already contain many TIFFs. These are then processed.
2) Upload new files to an existing collection, which would then be written to the above path and processed.
I guess the gist of my question is: What is the standard way to store, retrieve, and write to such large files in the context of web applications? Should the availability of a local file system with enough storage space be assumed, or is there a better way to do it?

I would look into storing the files with paperclip or carrierwave. They are two great file upload and management gems that allow you to store your files in many different ways.
I have included links to two great sceencasts above and here are the github pages for paperclip and carrierwave.