>>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

As I pointed out to Naomi the whole thing was simply a problem with the guy's ignorance re: array sizing - but I should have been more explicit. This line :

Dim buffer As Byte() = New Byte(sqlFileStream.Length) {}

dimensions the array to one byte more than the actual filestream length (in VB the parameter in the constructor refers to the upper bound ) which meant that after reading in the file he was left with an empty element on the end of the array. Of course in C# new byte[sqlFileStream.Length] would have given the required result :-}