in a kind-of-similar thread, someone had a table full of varbinary(max) datatypes full of graphic images, without the filename/extension, so they couldn't figure out if the file was *.jpg, *.gif or what.

That thread is here if you are curious:

http://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic1178898-392-1.aspx

when i was helping there, i wrote a snippet that read the first ten bytes in vb.NET from everything in a local folder so i could do the analysis and make some TSQL code to map the first ten bytes to known extensions.

here's the vb code i used:

Dim myFilePath As String = String.Empty

Dim myFileBrowser As New OpenFileDialog

Try

With myFileBrowser

'With statement is used to execute statements using a particular object, here,_

'setting filters so that Text files and All Files choice appears in the Files of Type box

'in the dialog

If .ShowDialog() = DialogResult.OK Then

'showDialog method makes the dialog box visible at run time

myFilePath = .FileName

End If

End With

Catch ex As Exception

MsgBox(ex.Message)

Finally

'If Not (sr Is Nothing) Then

' sr.Close()

'End If

End Try

'if we have a valid path, we can go forward.

If myFilePath <> String.Empty Then

' Open a file that is to be loaded into a byte array

Dim oFile As System.IO.FileInfo

oFile = New System.IO.FileInfo(myFilePath)

Dim oFileStream As System.IO.FileStream = oFile.OpenRead()

Dim lBytes As Long = oFileStream.Length

'the above would read the whole file into the byte array, we want just the 1st 10 bytes for testing.

lBytes = 10

If (lBytes > 0) Then

Dim fileData(lBytes - 1) As Byte

' Read the file into a byte array

oFileStream.Read(fileData, 0, lBytes)

oFileStream.Close()

Debug.Print(oFile.Extension & "||" & BitConverter.ToString(fileData))

End If

End If