ODBC and JDBC Guide

Chapter 7 | Supported standards 40
If file or JPEG data exists, the SELECT statement retrieves the data in binary form; otherwise, the
SELECT statement returns <null>.
To retrieve file reference information from a container field, such as the file path to a file, picture,
or Quicktime movie, use the CAST() function with a SELECT statement. For example:
SELECT CAST(Company_Brochures AS VARCHAR(NNN)) FROM Sales_Data
In this example, if you:
1 Inserted a file into the container field using FileMaker Pro but stored only a reference to the file,
the SELECT statement retrieves the file reference information as type SQL_VARCHAR.
1 Inserted the contents of a file into the container field using FileMaker Pro, the SELECT
statement retrieves the name of the file.
1 Imported a file into the container field from another application, the SELECT statement displays
'?' (the file displays as Untitled.dat in FileMaker
Pro).
To retrieve data from a container field, use the GetAs() function and specify the file’s type
depending on how the data was inserted into the container field in FileMaker Pro.
1 If the data was inserted using the Insert > File command, specify 'FILE' in the GetAs()
function. For example:
SELECT GetAs(Company_Brochures, 'FILE') FROM Sales_Data
1 If the data was inserted using the Insert > Sound command (Standard sound — Mac OS raw
format), specify
'snd' in the GetAs() function. For example:
SELECT GetAs(Company_Meeting, 'snd ') FROM Company_Newsletter
1 If the data was inserted using the Insert > Object command (OLE container data), specify
'EMBO' in the GetAs() function. For example:
SELECT GetAs(Company_Results, 'EMBO') FROM Annual_Report
1 If the data was inserted using the Insert > Picture command, drag and drop, or paste from the
clipboard, specify one of the file types listed in the following table. For example:
SELECT GetAs(Company_Logo, 'JPEG') FROM Company_Icons
File type Description File type Description
'EMF+' Windows Enhanced Metafile Plus 'PDF ' Portable Document Format
'EPS ' Embedded PostScript 'PICT' Mac OS (does not have 512-byte file-based header)
'FPix' Flash (FPX) 'PNGf' Bitmap image format
'FORK' Resource fork (Mac OS) 'PNTG' MacPaint
'GIFf' Graphics Interchange Format 'qtif' QuickTime image file
'JPEG' Photographic images '.SGI' Generic bitmap format
'JP2 ' JPEG 2000 'TIFF' Raster file format for digital images
'META' Windows Metafile (enhanced) 'TPIC' Targa
'METO' Windows Metafile (original) 'XMLO' Layout objects
'moov' Old QuickTime format (Mac OS) '8BPS' PhotoShop (PSD)