>Just in case - may be important to know about this little problem
>
>http://beyondrelational.com/blogs/jacob/archive/2010/02/18/why-do-excel-2007-prompt-for-repair-when-opening-a-document-stored-in-sql-server-2008-filestream-column.aspx?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ExploringBeyondRelational+%28Exploring+Beyond+Relational+.......%29
>

Naomi,
Did you check the validity of that blog entry before sending? I don't know VB and thus what he is doing wrong but I tried writing my code with C# and also VFP and I can't verify such a thing exists. FileStream works perfectly well and w/o any such errors. Here is C# code (both bufferings work - I mean all at once or in chunks):

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Data.SqlClient;
using System.IO;
using System.Data.SqlTypes;

namespace ConsoleApplication1
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            using (SqlConnection connection = new SqlConnection(
                @"server=.\SQL2008;Trusted_Connection=Yes;Database=NorthpOle"))
            {
                connection.Open();
                SqlCommand command = new SqlCommand("", connection);

                SqlTransaction tran = connection.BeginTransaction(
                   System.Data.IsolationLevel.ReadCommitted);
                command.Transaction = tran;

                command.CommandText =
                    "select Top(1) DocumentData.PathName(),"
                    + " GET_FILESTREAM_TRANSACTION_CONTEXT () from Documents";
                using (SqlDataReader reader = command.ExecuteReader())
                {
                    while (reader.Read())
                    {
                        // Get the pointer for the file
                        string path = reader.GetString(0);
                        byte[] transactionContext = reader.GetSqlBytes(1).Buffer;

                        // Create the SqlFileStream
                        SqlFileStream fileStream = new SqlFileStream(path,
                        (byte[])reader.GetValue(1),
                            FileAccess.Read,
                            FileOptions.SequentialScan, 0);

                        //byte[] buffer = new byte[fileStream.Length];
                        //Console.WriteLine("FS length: {0}",fileStream.Length);
                        //int bytesRead = fileStream.Read(buffer, 0, (int)fileStream.Length);
                        //Console.WriteLine("Bytes read: {0}",bytesRead);

                        //FileStream fs = new FileStream(@"c:\temp\xl2007X.xlsx", FileMode.CreateNew);
                        //BinaryWriter w = new BinaryWriter(fs);

                        //w.Write(buffer);

                        //w.Close();
                        //fs.Close();

                        FileStream fs = new FileStream(@"c:\temp\xl2007X.xlsx", FileMode.CreateNew);
                        BinaryWriter w = new BinaryWriter(fs);

                        byte[] buffer = new byte[8192];
                        Console.WriteLine("FS length: {0}",fileStream.Length);
                        int totRead = 0;
                        int bytesRead;
                        while ((bytesRead = fileStream.Read(buffer, 0, 8192)) > 0)
                        {
                            totRead += bytesRead;
                            w.Write(buffer, 0, bytesRead);
                        }
                        Console.WriteLine("Bytes read: {0}",totRead);

                        w.Close();
                        fs.Close();
                        
                        Console.WriteLine("Done");
                        fileStream.Close();
                    }
                }
                tran.Commit();
            }
        }
    }
}

And here is VFP sample anyway that also works perfectly well:

Local loCon As adodb.Connection, lorS As adodb.Recordset

loCon = Createobject('Adodb.Connection')
loCon.ConnectionString='Provider=SQLNCLI10.0;Server=.\SQL2008;Trusted_connection=yes;Database=NorthpOle'
loCon.Open()

lorS = loCon.Execute('select top 1 * from Documents')

Local ix
ix=0
Do While !lorS.Eof
	luValue = lorS.Fields('DocumentData').Value
	ix = m.ix + 1
	Strtofile(m.luValue, 'c:\temp\xl2007'+Padl(m.ix,2,'0')+'.xlsx')
	lorS.MoveNext
Enddo
lorS.Close()
loCon.Close()

Cetin