I worked on an applicaition that did both.

The "master" was stored in the db.
But.... the user could "publish" the file, which hard wrote it out to a
file.

This gave the user the ability to edit it, but not publish it until ready.

The system was based on users being able to modify the documents,
so.............it was worth the extra work.

..

Anyone who wanted the page, would always bring up the static/"published"
page.... mainly for performance reasons.

..

as a side note, persisting the page to the database helped with a trusted
storage mechanism.... aka, not relying on files to persist the data.

..

I'd also point out that data stored in a database has some advantages over
static pages, although not performance-wise:

- Raw data is easier to manipulate and work with than data rendered on a
page. For example you may want to expose the data via a web-service or RSS
feed.
- Sql Server has full-text indexing built in which will allow you to provide
some pretty powerfull search functionality for your users.
- Maintaining relationships between documents and categorising is generally
easier than using the file-system. Ie, a particular article record can
easily be associated with multiple categories using tables, but a static
page can only exist under one folder.

I've been working on internet and intranet based Content Managment Systems
developed in-house for over 2 years now, and agree with the other posts in
this thread. Keep raw "master" data in the database, but render this to
static pages for performance benefits.

Ben