Re: Printing blob fields in a report

In article <45lnot$edf@cssun.mathcs.emory.edu> BIRDIEO@wpgate1.ahs.state.vt.us writes: >From: BIRDIEO@wpgate1.ahs.state.vt.us >Subject: Printing blob fields in a report >Date: 13 Oct 1995 08:58:05 -0400 >Hi! I am looking for assistance or guidance on the easiest way to >print information in a blob field, preferably in an ace report. I am >working in Informix SQL 4.01, Online Engine 5.1. Any assistance you >could provide would be greatly appreciated. Blobs hold data in a format which you define. You need to provide the code to handle them. In the context of Ace I suppose the easiest way would be to link in ESQL/C to the Ace interpreter and pass the blob to it. You then have the problem of how to get the result into a report. If the blob could be interpreted as text the handler could pass that back to Ace to print. If the blob is a picture or something like that it gets difficult! Perhaps a solution there would be to dump the blob into a file in some suitable format (e.g. gif) and put a hook into the output report so that it could be post-processed in some way to send it to the printer. It would depend on the means available to you to embed pictures in your print output. Ian