Re: Inserting images into table

Matej Kenda (matej.kenda_at_uni-mb.si) wrote:
: Hi!

: We looked at that column later and we've seen that that column is of
: type LONG RAW, not Image, as we asked to be.

:

Yes. Most relational databases, including Oracle, suppport only "simple types" like strings, numbers and dates. These are the types, which SQL-queries can operate on (especially comparisons in the WHERE-clause). Large binary data like images, sounds or videos are stored using the LONG RAW-type. This type can not be used for comparisons in SQL-Statements and is not handled by standard tools like SQL*Plus or OracleForms.

: How can I insert images into this column? User's Guides do not describe
: this anywhere.

To insert and retrieve values from this column you have to write your own application, using the Oracle preprocessors for Ada, C etc or using the Oracle Call Interface which is available for several programming languages as well. Perhaps such applications already exist from other vendors than Oracle. But I do not know any commercial tool that supports the direct insertion of images into RAW-columns.

: Can I insert compressed GIFs to increase throughput over the Internet?

The structure of the inserted data is not relevant for Oracle. While values of simple data types are checked by the server for consistency, integrity etc. binary data (LONG RAW) is stored byte by byte, independent from the "meaning" of the data.
So if you store compressed gifs, normal gifs, jpegs or mpeg-videos does not affect Oracle's behaviour at all.

Greetings

Michael Skusa Received on Thu Jul 24 1997 - 00:00:00 CDT