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I've got a MSSQL database that stores JPEG images in a varbinary(max) field. I can of course bring this data into FME desktop with either the SQL Creator or the MSSQL_ADO reader. I also know I can get at the EXIF information using the JPEG reader and exposing those attributes. Where I get stuck is how to get from the fme-binary data into the JPEG reader to expose that meta data. Ultimately I'm trying to extract the GPS coordinates from the JPEG but nothing I've tried has worked. Since this is an ARCmap Feature Attachment table I can't be the first person who wants to extract the timestamp and GPS to verify or update the feature data to which the attachment is associated, but I can't figure it out.

Are you sure the EXIF is actually stored in the database?


Are you sure the EXIF is actually stored in the database?

When I use FME to write the JPG images to the local disk the EXIF information is there so it appears that the data is intact in the images.

 

 


ask this question on stack overflow. There are many answers and scripts to read the jpegs from mssql.

(no hits on this forum..yet)


ask this question on stack overflow. There are many answers and scripts to read the jpegs from mssql.

(no hits on this forum..yet)

Thank you for the suggestion. I did look there and while there are a number of threads about reading the JPEGs I didn't find anything that helped with reading the meta-data from those files. The fundamental problem is that every tool seems to treat it as a character string or a binary string not a file, so the tools that know how to read the meta-data can't read it until there is a file with which to deal.

 

 


Some googling indicates that MSSQL has no native understanding of the jpeg format or the EXIF extension, which means that you'll have to use some specialized software to get at the EXIF data.

This typically means reading the entire jpeg into something like FME or other software that knows what to look for.


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