While we are on the subject of external file handling....

What would it take to get IB capable of storing BLOB contents in individual
external files? Just allow it to determine a random file naming convention
and keep a path name in the metadata for the table or column (domain) to
tell where all the BLOB files are located. Then, InterBase would maintain
the files external to the GDB allowing a daily backup to only send to tape
the new guys for the day.

We have a server that is used to store tons of image files (we have a
web-search that displays UCC filings for the state of AZ). Right now it
isn't feasible to store those images in the database so we have all the
files external to the database and stored in the file system. Just their
file name and volume are stored in the database. We want to be able to do
daily backups on our database... It would be in the tens of GB in size of
all the images were in the database and that would make for too much I/O to
get our backups done.

It is quite a pain to interact with this image data from a client app on the
LAN and keep the network properly secured. Having everything accessible via
the standard client data access of IB would really make things easier. We
would have to be careful not to introduce any security problems in doing
this either...

Of course, I've long wanted to do true backup strategies with an IB database
instead of the all or nothing backups. We can save that debate for another
time. ;-)

Something tells me that either of these solutions would be a lot of work...
I guess this is the "Enterprise InterBase" that someday may come to be...

FWIW,
Jason Wharton
CPS - Mesa AZ
http://www.ibobjects.com