Ken elbows:
>And you do always have to handle all the routine details of
>IMAGE intrinsics....

Less so than other languages.  Image provides a BASIC specific set of
Intrinsics (XDBOPEN, XDBGET, etc.) that does all the record packing
and unpacking for you, and does extra checking such as validating that
the buffer you are reading into is, in fact, large enough for the data
you are trying to put into it, etc.

So BASIC actually has much BETTER Image support than most other 3GL
languages.  Transact, Java, and most 4GLish languages generally provide
the same or better functionality.  The Java Image interface(s) should
be particularly nice to program with.

G.