Displaying BLOB fields in Crystal solved!!!! 4

[b2bnettools]

As a follow up to the questions that I had placed on this board and was searching for in other areas, and since I have seen these same questions unanswered from other individuals I would like to help anyone who attempts to use BLOB fields. I have about 3 weeks of work into this trying to figure it out so I hope it saves someone time.<br><br>It turns out that the major thing you need to watch is that the graphics contained in the BLOB field are NOT GIF's. Crystal can't display them. Bitmaps seem fine, I am testing JPEGS but don't forsee a problem.<br><br>My major problem was that the graphic files I was given to load in by the customer all had a .jpg extension. Naturally, I assumed they were JPEG's. But low and behold, they were really GIF's. Now, to a browser, it doesn't seem to matter. It must read the header record of the graphic and determine what to do with it.<br><br>I wrote routines to import and export them to and from the database and finally found the GIF definition in the header file of the graphic. That tipped me off to the problem.<br><br>I really don't know why Crystal doesn't support GIF's; this seems silly.<br><br>But for anyone who wants to store graphic images in BLOB fields and then display them in Crystal make sure the source files are compatible with Crystal. Otherwise you will need to write some conversion routines (just like I am doing right now) to take all of your graphic files and convert them to JPEG's.<br><br>

 

[VBmim]

Aha!!!

So that's my problem here!!

Well, you saved my time allright... I have only been searching for 3 days .

I have an Access 2000 database with a ole-object field. In this field I want to store pictures (in my case gif's) and show them in a report.
I noticed that if you inserted the pictures manually in the database, the pictures would show in the report. When I added the pictures trough code (vb) the pictures didn't show... Soooooooo my conclusion was that my code was wrong... NOT apparently

anywho, thanks for the help!!

greetz

Mim

 

[cmpgeek]

ok - i know i should leave well enough alone; but this appears to be something rather important - or at least time consuming - may i ask what a BLOB file is and how it is used... ShannonLea
Computer Coordinator 4 Surgical Services
Athens Ga

 

[VBmim]

BLOB: Binary large object B? or something like that ...
Mostly this is image files, or large text files that are stored in field like these

 

[Naith]

You got it, VBmim. Binary Large OBject. No extra B.

They should really be used for images, where databases like Oracle support CLOBs (Character b]L[/b]arge OBject which are intended to hold large amounts of texts. However, BLOBs can also be used for large amounts of text too. Like Memos.

Naith

 

[homio1]

Do we have to so this for CR version 9?..or just CR 8.5 and below?

 

[DocFKNx]

I was never having problems SEEING BLOBs in a report. The problem I'm having is the selection box/canvas size wireframe around the BLOBs is easily 5 times the actual size of the graphic. If you try to resize this so you can put other objects around it in the report the image is automatically resized (and poorly at that). Anyone else run into this behavior? Does it have something to do with the way the BLOB was stored in SQL to begin with? Thanks!

X

 

[grelunaz]

B2bnettools, you the man if it works... I'm under pressure to finish a report with blob fields included and this might get me going. Any sample code for the conversion to jpg that you mentioned? That would definitely save some more time, as it seems that converting the image simply by saving it as <filename>.jpg, doesn't do the trick.Thanx!