Caching aside, if the insert-whatever-binary-data lives in the filesystem then serving the content to the end user can be handled entirely at the HTTP layer without any interaction with the RDBMS. It could possibly be handed off to separate HTTP servers dedicated to that purpose which never even talk to the RDBMS, lowering the load on the database and freeing up its resources to do what it does best (servicing more queries rather than shuffling bits).