[GLLUG] BLOBs in Databases

[Chick Tower]

I've been doing a little research into SQLite, and they have a storage 
class (they say it's slightly more general than a datatype) for binary 
large objects (BLOB).  You can store photo images, or I suppose even 
executables, in the database.  (I assume the same is true for other 
databases.)  My question is why?  You can't view an image with SQLite. 
How do you even get an image out of a database to view it?

Perhaps I'm wrong in the intended use of the BLOB storage class.  It 
says on the SQLite website "The value is a blob of data, stored exactly 
as it was input."  So maybe it's intended for something other than 
images, but, if so, what?  I still wonder how you extract a BLOB from a 
database in order to do anything with it.  Does anyone know what to do 
with BLOBs?
-- 

                                Chick