image long binary data

@masa raised the classic question about storing images in an Access OLE Object field and what "Long Binary" means; @chris3000 echoed the problem and @katarey pointed to another thread. In short: "Long Binary" means a BLOB of raw bytes (ADO type adLongVarBinary). An Access OLE Object cell often contains an extra OLE wrapper if the image was embedded from the Access UI, and that wrapper prevents the raw JPEG/PNG bytes from being streamed straight to a browser. For web apps, either store the file on disk and save its path in the DB, or save raw bytes programmatically from ASP (do not use the Access UI to embed images).

Recommended, reliable workflow:

• Upload the file from the browser (multipart/form-data) and save it to disk or into an ADODB.Stream.
• Insert raw bytes into the OLE Object/Long Binary column using ADODB.Stream + Recordset.AppendChunk or an ADODB.Command parameter of type adLongVarBinary (205).
• To serve the image, SELECT the binary and use Response.ContentType + Response.BinaryWrite.
• If existing records were inserted via the Access UI and appear corrupt on the web, they likely contain an OLE wrapper; re-insert programmatically or use a wrapper-stripping routine (fragile).

Example (classic ASP) — insert and retrieve:

' insert_image.asp
Set conn = Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Connection")
conn.Open "Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data Source=" & Server.MapPath("db.mdb") & ";"

Set stm = Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Stream")
stm.Type = 1 ' adTypeBinary
stm.Open
stm.LoadFromFile Server.MapPath("/uploads/photo.jpg")
blob = stm.Read

Set rs = Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Recordset")
rs.Open "Images", conn, 1, 3
rs.AddNew
rs("FileName") = "photo.jpg"
rs("ImageData").AppendChunk blob
rs.Update

rs.Close
stm.Close
conn.Close

' show_image.asp?id=1
Set conn = Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Connection")
conn.Open "Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data Source=" & Server.MapPath("db.mdb") & ";"

Set rs = Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Recordset")
rs.Open "SELECT MimeType, ImageData FROM Images WHERE ID=" & CInt(Request.QueryString("id")), conn, 3, 1

If Not rs.EOF Then
  Response.ContentType = rs("MimeType")
  Response.BinaryWrite rs("ImageData")
End If

rs.Close
conn.Close

For stream/read details see the ADODB Stream object documentation: ADODB Stream object. Note: Access has size and concurrency limitations; for production sites consider storing files on disk or using a server DB (SQL Server) instead of Jet/ACE.