# open data files stored in database
**URL:** https://discourse.paraview.org/t/open-data-files-stored-in-database/3789
**Category:** ParaView Support
**Created:** [March 11, 2020, 1:29pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/open-data-files-stored-in-database/3789 "2020-03-11T13:29:48Z")
**Posts on this page:** 3
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Yoshino](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/Yoshino)
#### Post date: [March 11, 2020, 1:29pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/open-data-files-stored-in-database/3789/1 "2020-03-11T13:29:48Z")
After learning ParaView’s C/S mode, I understand that after paraview client connects to a server, its _File-\>Open_ action will actually browse the file system of the machine in which the server is running. I’m really surprised bacause I had always been thinking that the server side should fetch the data from database, which makes it easier to manage data files and safer as well.
So is it possible for paraview, or generally paraview-brand apps, to connect to a server that fetchs data from database?
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### Author:  [@cory.quammen](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/cory.quammen)
#### Post date: [March 11, 2020, 2:11pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/open-data-files-stored-in-database/3789/2 "2020-03-11T14:11:32Z")
Reading files from a remote file system is an extremely common use case. Do you have particular database software in mind?
To read data from a database one would need to develop a custom data source for ParaView. It’s possible, but there is nothing in ParaView that connects to a SQL server or anything as far as I know.
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### Author:  [@Yoshino](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/Yoshino)
#### Post date: [March 12, 2020, 1:10am UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/open-data-files-stored-in-database/3789/3 "2020-03-12T01:10:51Z")
Thanks for reply. I’m looking for ways to build a structured data storage. For example, some time-varying data could be sampled at hour’s interval while other with lower definition might be sampled at day’s interval. It is also possible to achieve this in file system, but database certainly does a good job on this.