Q:

Storing Local Filesystem Paths in Database

I'm developing a webapp where I have sets of data stored locally on my computer and I run a tool which transforms the data and uploads it to my webapp.  However, I need to be able to rerun the tool on all the sets of data at once.  The only option I have thought of is to associate the transformed object's reference in the database with the path to my file on my local computer. 
The problems with this approach are apparent, however; for example, what if the file paths change and the database isn't updated? 
Another approach is to store all of the data on a cloud server, however this makes it extremely complex to edit the data (download, edit, upload, test, etc). 
I'm wondering how this is usually handled in a business environment and whether there are any other methods I haven't thought of. 

A:

Youre correct in suggesting you should probably avoid storing the full filepath in your database.  
A solution to this is to store a relative path to the files in the database, and store the root file path as a configuration option for your application.