Photo's as OLE in Access XP

[Peter Marks]

I am creating a Databse that will contain a great many
Photo's, I'm using JPG's (about 11k each). Each photo I
add to the database add's 1mb to the database.

I do not want to link the photo's as it is being moved
around a fair bit.

Is there a graphic format that Access uses better?

Would it work better if I put the graphics in a seperate
table and linked them, rather than in the same table as
the data.

If I winzip the file I get 50/60% compression so access
is wasting space, I have used the Compact and Repair Tool
but this never saves more than 1k.

Any suggests please.

Regards

Pete

 

[Exponent]

Using OLE Embedding (or OLE Linking) to store compressed images can cause a huge overhead, since the images
are usually stored as uncompressed bitmaps in the table – for jpeg this can often result in using 10 times
the space required for the original jpeg file or more. The technique also relies on an external application
to store and display the images, which often gives rise to problems when the application needs to run on
multiple systems, since you cannot assume that every user has the same application registered for the particular
file-type, or even present on his machine.

If you want to store the images in tables then you should store the raw binary image data only. Then the
images will occupy the same space as they would stored as disk files. This also avoids the problem of
extracting the original image, since no undocumented headers are used and the compression has not been
discarded. Furthermore, this also permits interoperability with other technologies, such as VB or asp
etc.

You can also reduce the space you need by only storing the resolution needed by your application, for example,
there may be no point storing a hi-res digital camera image at full resolution if it will only be viewed
in a small area on screen (unless you want additional resolution to zoom-in, or for printing).

 

[Peter Marks]

Thanks for the reply, I have so far reduced the overhead
from 1mb per record to 10/15 records per mb. I will
continue to look at this to utilise the software better.

Regards

Pete

-----Original Message-----

Using OLE Embedding (or OLE Linking) to store compressed

images can cause a huge overhead, since the images

are usually stored as uncompressed bitmaps in the table -

for jpeg this can often result in using 10 times

the space required for the original jpeg file or more.

The technique also relies on an external application

to store and display the images, which often gives rise

to problems when the application needs to run on

multiple systems, since you cannot assume that every

user has the same application registered for the
particular

file-type, or even present on his machine.

If you want to store the images in tables then you

should store the raw binary image data only. Then the

images will occupy the same space as they would stored

as disk files. This also avoids the problem of

extracting the original image, since no undocumented

headers are used and the compression has not been

discarded. Furthermore, this also permits

interoperability with other technologies, such as VB or
asp

etc.

You can also reduce the space you need by only storing

the resolution needed by your application, for example,

there may be no point storing a hi-res digital camera

image at full resolution if it will only be viewed

in a small area on screen (unless you want additional

resolution to zoom-in, or for printing).