table background using "img src="?

[jacobdesch]

My question is this. I am doing a mass-mailing HTML template with a table set up with images and text within it. What the client wants to do his have a tiling background image within the table as a background. (it's a pretty simple, textured canvas look that actually tiles quite nicely, if I do say so myself). However, when my partner puts it through the FileMaker Database that we are using to send the mail, it doesn't recognize the background. He thinks it is because the FileMaker Database isn't recognizing the "background=" tag in the HTML. We can get images to work just fine, however. So, what we're wondering is if we can somehow define a background using an "img src=" tag instead of "background=" I've also seen another solution using css, but it hasn't been tested through the database yet and it looks pretty much the same, so I'm not sure if its even worth spending time on. It looks like this:

<table width="612" border="0" style="background-image": url('background.png') bgcolor="#FFFFFF">

I'm also fairly inexperienced with HTML and am really using Dreamweaver to do it all for me, so I suppose that could be part of the problem....

Does anyone know if you can use the "img src=" tag to define a background (in a table, mind you) or if there is possibly another viable solution or if we should just try to convince them to decide on a background color? Thoughts? Ideas?

[AnotherDesigner]

Ideally, use CSS to 'insert' the background image.
But using the style setting for the table i would think it would be

<table width="612" border="0" style="background: #FFFFFF url(background.png) repeat"></table>

where REPEAT is either
repeat = horizontal and vertically
repeat-x = horizontal
repeat-y = vertical

NOTE: the background colour is set just prior to the url link