diagnosysuk wrote:

> I want to store a large number of blobs in a firebird database but I
> really want to only store a filename rather than the data (to make the
> database file smaller).

You could use two databases: one for Blobs and other for all the rest.
That way you:

- still have a small database without Blobs
- have easy backup/restore procedure
- have no problems accessing the data
- have no problems with synchronization (you can use transactions that
span both databases for atomic changes).

--
Milan Babuskov
http://www.flamerobin.org