IMHO, the best way to store images (or any unstructured data) is in their
raw, native form.

I'd acquire the images however you want (digital camera, scanner) and store
them as raw .bmp .jpg or .gif or whatever in the HP3000 POSIX space, and set
up a web page or two on the HP3000 that point to them.

You can successfully achieve all this on the HP3000 (apart from the actual
photography or scanning) using a combination of Samba/iX (or FTP) to get the
images onto the HP3000, and Apache/iX to serve them up on demand. You don't
need all of these, it's just easier if you have them.

If your client structured data is held in Image databases (and I can't think
of a better place to store the data :)), then add a field that points to a
"serial" number which resolves to the actual image, or even better if you
have a unique client key (very likely), name the image with the client key
as part of the name (so, Client key is 1234567, his mug shot is
MS1234567.jpg). That way, no change will be required to your existing data
structures.

There are so many ways to solve this problem, and I guess that's what makes
computing so very enjoyable.

Regards

Neil


-----Original Message-----
From: Chris [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 13 January 2001 09:40
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Hooking a Digital Camera to HP3000


Hi everyone.

I'm looking into getting a digital camera attached to a HP3000 mainframe.
The idea is so we can store images of our clients on our database. Is there
a way this can be done, what equitment would I need, and how much do you
think it would cost to implament it.