Ken Born noted:

> I am perplexed with the following.  We have a database
> schema for a set as
> ......
>       ITEMS:
>          ARRESTEE-KEY,         X8            <<SEARCH ITEM>>
>
> But the data contains the following:
>
> ARRESTEE-KEY     = (!A
> ARRESTEE-KEY     =      @V
> ARRESTEE-KEY     = (
> ARRESTEE-KEY     = (8#

There have already been several good answers.  Just a follow-
on to note that while you can declare something as X8 or
whatever in the database, IMAGE does not itself do any type-
checking:  As long as you don't over-run the buffer or some
etc. that results in an IMAGE intrinsic error, you can DBPUT
/ DBGET any bit pattern you want in to / out of that X8 or other
fields.

I believe Fred originated a good summary of this:  He said:
"IMAGE was designed to be a dataBASE management system,
not a DATA management system".

...  whether or not IMAGE could or should gain some additional
data management capabilities is another question;  that has
already resulted in several raging public and private debates...

Ken Sletten