Hi John;
We use the SelectBob feature in all our Appeon based applications here are at Passport Canada! 
Below is a screen capture of one of the Web applications that redacts credit card information. The images come from the ASE database via an Appeon based SelectBlob (in & out of the Image column type). We also use PB based Web Service NVUO's to help redact, rotate, flip, crop, OCR, compress/decompress, etc the images. All the WS interaction is between Appeon Web & the PB NVUO's. Everything you see here is written in PB 12.5.1 Classic& running in Appeon v2013R2 under a .NET (IIs) deployment model.
FYI: Passport will be migrating to Appeon Web 2016R1 as soon as its available (within the next few months I understand).
BTW: All the Appeon Web applications here at Passport use the STD Integrated Foundation Class framework for all client side development. As you can see from the above screen capture ... web applications look like real Web based applications. They behave that way because the Framework supports the Canadian Government's web design standard (CLF).
All the PB based Web Service NVUO's are built from the STD Web Service Foundation Class framework.
Q1: Was it problematic or effortless?
A1: Pretty much effortless.
- However, the Web Service "helper" converts the various image formats to a "neutral" format (JPG) that the DW uses to display the passport image (as you see above). If you have weird image types or compression schemes that the DW cannot render - then you would need to adopt this approach.
- The current Appeon 2015R1 b359 BTW does not support the PB 12.5.x & higher "TableBlob" feature.
Q2: Having brick wall experience here.
A2: Exactly what difficulties are you encountering?
Note: The Appeon Server connects to our ASE DBMS by using both native and ODBC drivers.
Regards ... Chris
PS: We can run the above application "as is" with no modifications as well on either an Android or Apple tablet using Appeon Mobile.
PPS: I have already tested this application using PB 12.6 Classic and it compiles, deploys & runs just great using the latest Appeon 2015R1 build 359 based server under IIs 7,5! 