Hello Hilmar

It does sound like a lot more space may be used up storing Blobs this way.
I wonder if the effect is constant or if it is only noticed if you have a few Blobs to store in the FPT.

Maybe it is a one off penalty and does not get much worse if you add a lot of Blobs.

Vlad has doen some things in this area I will forward this to him:)

Thanks Hilmar:)






>>Which database is better at storing and retrieving Binary Large Object data.
>>
>>
>>Security issues aside......
>>Is it VFP or SQL Server.
>>
>>Is either of these a good technology for storing this type of data or are the BLOBS better dealt with as independent files in a folder.
>>
>>All comments gratefully received.
>
>I have no experience with SQL Server.
>
>In VFP, I did some testing. The results are interesting:
>
>A JPG file (a picture of one of our shoes), kept as a separate file, used about 50 KB.
>
>Inserted into a general field (in a test file), the DBF + FPT (mainly FPT) increased in size by over 1 MB. This is a factor of over 20.
>
>Therefore, I only reference the filename in an 8-character char field. (8 character is enough for our purposes, since we use the article code; path and extension are the same for all files).
>
>BUT: perhaps general fields are easier to manipulate in some cases. However, because of the tremendous difference in file-size, if required, I would copy them into temp files on-demand (like, for reports).
>
>HTH, Hilmar.