In case you missed it a patch fixing the above issue is now available. This issue was identified late last year with ArcGIS 9.3.1 Service Pack 1. Details about this problem can be found on my post here: http://geo.geek.nz/esri/…
The patch addresses the following issue:
NIM052174 – Raster Catalogs and Feature Classes with raster fields stored in ArcSDE for SQL Server do not display after applying the 9.3.1 Service Pack 1.
Description: The pixel data of a raster catalog stored in ArcSDE for SQL Server 9.3.1 sp1 does not display. Performing an identify operation on a feature of a feature class that has a raster field stored in ArcSDE for SQL Server 9.3.1 sp1 will not return any results. If you use a direct connection from ArcGIS to an ArcSDE SQL Server instance, the problem will occur if Service Pack 1 has been applied to ArcGIS 9.3.1. If you connect to an ArcSDE for SQL Server application server, the problem will occur if you apply Service Pack 1 to ArcSDE for SQL Server 9.3.1
Download links for this patch can be found here: http://support.esri.com/index.cfm…