title: Reading FOP images from database
body: <p>My application generates PDFs using images stored in the EAR. The images are changed about on a monthly basis, and I would like to move them into the database to avoid deployment by every image file change. </p>
  
  <p>Unforunately there is a problem:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;fo:block&gt;
             &lt;fo:external-graphic src=”testImage.gif”/&gt;
  &lt;/fo:block&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The FOP can just accept URL as parameter. 
  I could create a servlet that reads the database and can give an image and then I could refer to the servlet url from the FOP context, but I think it is not the best solution. 
  An other solution would be storing the images in the file system and recording the filenames in the database, but I do like none of these options.
  What do you think about these solutions? Is there any third one?
  Thanks
  Zoltan</p>