Loading the simple-large-object images with the blobload utility

The blobload utility is the program that is provided as part of the demonstration files. It uses a command-line syntax to load a byte image into a specified table and column of a database.

To load the simple-large-object images with blobload:

  1. Compile the blobload.ec program with the following command:
    esql -o blobload blobload.ec
  2. Enter blobload on the UNIX™ command line without any arguments.
    The following figure shows the output of this command that describes the command-line arguments that blobload expects.
    Figure 1: Sample output from the blobload utility
    Sorry, you left out a required parameter.
    
    Usage: blobload  {-i | -u}             -- choose insert or update
                   -f filename             -- file containing the blob data
              -d database_name             -- database to open
                 -t table_name             -- table to modify
                -b blob_column             -- name of target column
       -k key_column key_value             -- name of key column and a value
                            -v             -- verbose documentary output
    
    All parameters except -v are required.
    
    Parameters may be given in any order.
    
    As many as 8 -k parameter pairs may be specified.
  3. Run the blobload program to load each image to its proper cat_picture column.

    The -u option of blobload updates a specified column with a simple-large-object image. To identify which column to update, you must also use the -f, -d, -t, -b, and -k options of blobload.

You must run the blobload program once for each image file that you want to update. For example, the following command loads the contents of the cn_10027.gif file into the cat_picture column of the row for catalog_num 10027. The catalog_num column is the key column in the catalog table.
blobload -u -f cn_10027.gif -d stores7 -t catalog -b cat_picture -k 
   catalog_num 10027

Use the same command to update each of the four remaining image files, substituting the file name (-f option) and corresponding catalog_num value (-k option) of the image file that you want to load.