Oracle OID : get the employee's photo

I was asked to build a JSP page within our Portal application to show some employee's characteristics.
It is easy to get all the common attributes with the search() method, but I never found anything to get the photo. Maybe this kind of function exists but I never found it.
So I decided to search where this binary file was stored.
Actually, it is stored in the ODS.DS_BATTRSTORE table:

CREATE TABLE DS_BATTRSTORE
(
  ENTRYID      NUMBER                           NOT NULL,
  ATTRNAME     VARCHAR2(255 BYTE)                   NULL,
  ATTRVAL      BLOB                                 NULL,
  ATTRHASHVAL  VARCHAR2(4000 BYTE)                  NULL
)

The ENTRYID contains the internal number, the ATTRNAME contains in this case the constant ‘jpegphoto’ and the image is stored in the ATTRVAL column.

So, if you know the employee number, you can extract his/her photo with the following query:

SELECT
    attrval
FROM
    DS_BATTRSTORE  bs
WHERE
    bs.attrname = 'jpegphoto'
AND EXISTS
   (
     SELECT 'x' FROM CT_EMPLOYEENUMBER  ct
     WHERE ct.entryid = bs.entryid AND ct.attrvalue = 'employee_number'

    )
;

Francois