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kevincallan
Starting Member
13 Posts |
 Posted - 2009-04-10 : 11:32:27
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| I am a newb and seek help accessing BLOB data as a recordset.A little background:The application code that writes data to the table is LabVIEW (LV). We store several types of data all with slightly different data structure. The data is mostly ordered (x,y). We flatten the data to a string and store in a TEXT cell. I can query the database from LV, retrieve the records, undo the flattening operation, and view the data as in its original form.The challange:If I want to retrieve the data as a recordset using Access, Excel, or just by using the SQL Server Management Studio, what approaches might I consider to open the BLOB, decode the structure (which is known), format it into a recordset, and deliver it to the client as a recordset? I would really like get the recordset just as if it was stored as a set of ordered pairs in a table but I don't want to store it permanently as a table.My skills:I know some Python, C++, VBScript, and a few other languages but don't understand how to apply those skills to the problem at hand.Thanks. |
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yosiasz
Master Smack Fu Yak Hacker
1635 Posts |
Posted - 2009-04-14 : 12:18:10
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| maybe this?http://support.microsoft.com/kb/258038<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>If you don't have the passion to help people, you have no passion |
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whitefang
Enterprise-Level Plonker Who's Not Wrong
272 Posts |
Posted - 2009-04-14 : 12:22:30
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| I don't think you can return a recordset.However, in .NET, you can transform the data into a DataTable which you can iterate over. In other languages, I'm sure you can create an object with properties and load those properties.By the way, this is bad design to store in a blob rather than separate columns. |
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kevincallan
Starting Member
13 Posts |
Posted - 2009-04-15 : 09:23:09
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| Thank you both for your posts. I have read the article and it doesn't seem to fit for my application.Regarding whitefang's comment about this being a bad design, I have heard the arguments on both sides and can see the benefits of both. I actually started with the approach to store every ordered pair in a separate record and I liked doing it that way. However, since each step of my test was producing approximately 8000 records of ordered pairs, none of which can ever be meaningful without the others, the only benefit of doing it that way was to avoid this problem of extraction. On the other hand, since the data really belongs together conceptually, the BLOB method seemed like a workable alternative. I really don't care one way or other. It seems to me like one of those religious arguments that too often occur. The right solution really depends on a number of factors being carefully considered. |
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yosiasz
Master Smack Fu Yak Hacker
1635 Posts |
Posted - 2009-04-15 : 11:31:45
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| what if you concatenated the columns and return them as a recordset?<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>If you don't have the passion to help people, you have no passion |
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Accessing BLOB data as a recordset