Remove EXIF metadata from photos stored in BLOB in Oracle table

We recently upgraded our RAC database to Oracle 12.2. Everything is going fine, except one of the reports which may include photos. It is basically a report for a specific property that has address, location, etc and sometimes photos. We have been working with the vendor for many days right now trying to get this resolved.

The one thing that we have found is that the reports having the issue have photos that include EXIF metadata. Knowing that Oracle FRS 10g can't handle EXIF, the vendor has a package written that is supposed to convert the image so that it is readable. This doesn't seem to be working but no one knows why. We have found that the user can download the offending image, rename it and then upload it back into the application and it works just fine.

We have almost 40,000 photos that have EXIF metadata and can't possibly go thru one-by-one. So while we know this isn't the long term solution we are thinking that if we can write a script or find a third party tool to help with this, then we could make our customers happy.

So, have any of you ever had a need to strip EXIF metadata from an image that is stored as a BLOB in an Oracle table? Any suggestions would be helpful!

Thanks!

Sallie Cottingham, OCP
Database Administrator
Comptroller of the Treasury
Technology Solutions
425 Fifth Avenue North
Nashville, TN 37243-34001
sallie.Cottingham_at_cot.tn.gov<mailto:sallie.Cottingham_at_cot.tn.gov> 615-401-7962