title: Should I scan and store a customers I.D. card and fingerprint in a BLOB for every transaction?
body: <p><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/Q0dPC.png" alt="enter image description here"></p>
  
  <p>I have a pawnshop app written with isql 7.32.  A new law now requires that the customer's I.D. and a Fingerprint be recorded on the original printed ticket every time a loan or buy transaction is performed, and that these tickets must be kept for 5 years.</p>
  
  <p>On average, my pawnshops process over 6,000 transactions per year, so 5 years worth can easily run over 30,000 transactions!.. This implies a huge increase in storage consumption if I were to store the images for each transaction and would like to know if queries and updates would significantly take longer. </p>
  
  <p>Also, I would imagine that these images are BLOB's (BYTE) datatypes, in which each image is stored externally from the database in a separate file, thus the directory containing them would grow to tens of thousands of files, is this a problem? </p>
  
  <p>Up to now, I've only been storing one I.D. and Fingerprint per customer when they are added for the first time into the customer master table. </p>
  
  <p>Would it be better to manually copy the I.D. and Fingerprint on to the rear side of pawn and buy tickets once they have been printed, but continue to store one I.D. and one fingerprint per customers on the customers master table for customer authentication purposes? </p>
  
  <p>It is my understanding that with ISQL's "Perform" screens, when a query is performed, the BLOBs are not accessed during the query, rather they are accessed when users choose to see them with Perform's View command?</p>
  
  <p>How should I design this table to ensure performance?</p>
  
  <p>EDIT: The other question to ask is: Is there really a need to access these images on a regular basis?.. NO!.. The reason the Law is requiring it is for Law Enforcement to have more information available in identifying someone who has stolen the property and pawned or sold it to the pawnshop, so anyway, they're going to request to see the item(s), their associated printed document(s), and their corresponding I.D. and Fingerprint.. What Law Enforcement will usually ask the pawnshop owner is if any reported stolen items matching a similar description are or were at the pawnshop because in most cases, the perpetrator is unknown. Thus, a query by the item(s) description is performed, and any transactions that contain similar desired items, Law Enforcement will want to see the item(s) and review the original printed transaction document to see who done it!</p>