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Decoding BLOB Data Stored as Binary in MySQL (CSENTRY Application)

Posted: December 2nd, 2024, 1:45 am
by bioams
Hi all,

I have a question regarding decoding a BLOB field (named "questionnaire") that is stored as binary data in a MySQL database. This BLOB data is created during the synchronization process in the CSENTRY application.

Can anyone guide me on how to decode this binary BLOB data or explain the process involved?

Thanks in advance!

Re: Decoding BLOB Data Stored as Binary in MySQL (CSENTRY Application)

Posted: December 2nd, 2024, 10:45 am
by justinlakier
Hello,

See this forum post on BLOB cases in the questionnaire column (viewtopic.php?t=5195) for details on how to view a case using MySQL Workbench with a query. See this forum post on syncing with BLOBs (viewtopic.php?t=2389), particularly Greg's link at the end with the steps on how to break out the cases to MySQL tables. These should help you decode/break out your BLOBs.

Hope this helps,
Justin

Re: Decoding BLOB Data Stored as Binary in MySQL (CSENTRY Application)

Posted: December 3rd, 2024, 12:13 am
by bioams
Thank You , Justin

Re: Decoding BLOB Data Stored as Binary in MySQL (CSENTRY Application)

Posted: January 6th, 2025, 6:57 am
by htuser
@Justin. When parsing data to MySQL relational schema, there's an issue: viewtopic.php?p=18147#p18147
I think the Developer team should give a way to choose between storing data as longtext or originally as it is on device (sqlite).
Storing data as longtext is an issue mainly when you need to connect MySQL to other software for performing analysis. The software recognize all data as string and this require a lot of work to reformat data structures in the correct format...

Re: Decoding BLOB Data Stored as Binary in MySQL (CSENTRY Application)

Posted: January 6th, 2025, 1:10 pm
by aaronw
@bioams

CSWeb allows the blobs to be processed under the settings tab. You can specify a database where the blob will be normallized and stored. This is typically used to display reports. See the data settings helps.

https://www.csprousers.org/help/CSWeb/d ... tings.html

Alternatively, if you want to work with the data, I would recommend downloading the data as a csdb and working with it in CSPro. Additionally, you can export it to several formats and go from there.