Yes, the big question is what do you want to do with these excel documents once they're in the DB. You can store them as BLOBS quite happily, but then you can store them as files on the filesystem too, and the latter allows you to manipulate the documents in various ways (eg running code to change them).

If you're just storing them for later retrieval, then store them as blobs. You can store additional metadata about the contents alongside the blob and this is the approach I'd use if you needed to run queries about the documents.

Note that SQL Server 2012 has the ability to index files that are stored in 'filetables' which are hybrid file/DBs so you get the benefit of both.

Yes, the big question is what do you want to do with these excel documents once they're in the DB. You can store them as BLOBS quite happily, but then you can store them as files on the filesystem too, and the latter allows you to manipulate the documents in various ways (eg running code to change them).

If you're just storing them for later retrieval, then store them as blobs. You can store additional metadata about the contents alongside the blob and this is the approach I'd use if you needed to run queries about the documents.

Note that SQL Server 2012 has the ability to index files that are stored in 'filetables' which are hybrid file/DBs so you get the benefit of both.