Using XML to Transport Images

Today's investigation is using XML as a data transport for all types of data (binary and image data included). I decided to start by looking at how image data is stored in XML . Although there are many different encoding schemes and algorithms out there, it seems my best bet will be to store the images with a base64 encoding. This seems to be the default method being discussed and used (although not the absolute most efficient for large images).

Now that I have generated my XML file to transport data to a web server, now I need to transform the base64 data to a real image. This is where I have been hung up. Most of my research has pointed to storing a pointer to an image in the XML file instead of the image itself. Some, not all, of my images are data, not presentation. In essense, I want to be able to send XML to different rendering engines (web, pdf, third party) and have all the data intacted.

Next is the question of rights to view the image. Having authrization to view the document as a whole should be continued at the image level. If I just store this image as a link, I can't control access to the image alone. In addition, this complicates the matter if I wish to use a Apache/Linux box vs IIS/Windows box.

I'll add another post to discuss my findings.