Neil Harvey writes:

> My 0.2c worth of advice is to avoid storing the scanned images as
>  "BLOB"s in some relational database.
>
>  Scan them and store them as serial numbers in a slashed sub directory
>  structure, so image number 0010132456.tif is stored under a directory as
>  follows:-
>
>  \\IMAGESERVER\Images\00\10\13\24\56.tif
>
>  Each subdirectory will hold only 100 entries, and will be VERY swift to
>  get to. The HP3000 can be used to maintain the serial number sequence.
>
>  As for the index information, store this in the world's most robust and
>  easy-to-use database called TurboImage.
>  All you need to image-enable any application (existing, or new) is a
>  single field (column) tagged onto the already indexed dataset record.
>
>  It's not that difficult to do this, and now with Samba/iX, you can even
>  store the images on the HP3000.

Exactly the right answer, Neil! (and that's just not speaking as an
enthusiast of the HP3000. This is probably the safest, easiest,
fastest-to-retrieve method of managing a large database of images).

Posix-name addressing schemes aren't necessary to success, however. Standard
MPE names will still give you 7 decimal places (10 million images). An
example might be:

     I0000001.year1997.images

With each years' new images, the counting sequence could be begun over again
in a new group.

However, the naming scheme is unimportant to Neil's solution. Whatever naming
scheme is chosen, the name will simply become a bit of text in a X40 dataitem
field.

Wirt Atmar