Detecting color of an image stored in the database

Question

So what I want to do is store images inside a database and not on the file system. And after storing them, i want to detect whether the image is coloured or black& white, crop the image to a size i specify later, etc.

Also, I don't want to get the image manipulation done via the overlying application like Java, C# or PhP as my database may be indirectly accessed without using any overlying application.

For storing images, I checked the following DBMS's:

1. Oracle Multimedia(formerly Intermedia) but couldn't really find an image manipulation documentation, also the installation of different modules is rather confusing.
2. IBM DB2 and even though the image extenders have been discontinued, I have found a suitable third party image processing library, ImageMagick. From whatever I have read this is the most suitable database with the extension for my requirement, but i am a bit skeptical about its usefulness as its pretty old (http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/data/library/techarticle/dm-0504stolze/ <- This was written in 2005)
3. SQL server with Filestream where I can store images as BLOB, but i am again not sure about how can I fulfill my requirements.
4. MongoDB with GridFS, and this also helps in storing images but not exactly manipulating.

I am now lost and require a direction where I can proceed so that I am not stuck anymore at choosing a suitable DB. Any alternative DBMS or method to do the things I want are more than welcome.

Answer 1

In software world (and not only there) people are making things that does one thing, but they try to make it in such a way, that this one thing will be done perfectly. It does not make sense much sense to create a database that no only store information, but also be an image editor, video clips enhancer and a text reader.

It is better to make it just a database and if it is so much in need, create 3 other programs for each of this task.

Therefore you will not find a database which will fulfill your requirements, store images in your database if you want so and then calculate your color, resize them on the application layer. If you need to do this often - then store them in database, precalculate and preresize things you need and store them in database as well. Then query based on precalculated values.