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