Storing Moderate Size Free Form Text

I have a legacy system (PC Based) that stores free form text in MEMO fields. I'm moving the entire system to Oracle/NT and have reached a crossroads. The text varies from about 1K chars to about 10K chars. Clearly the varchar2(2000) (by itself) is inadequate, but the LONG datatype is too cumbersome. Among other requirements, the users want to perform searches on this column (infrequently, but nontheless a req.) I was about to go to a varchar2(2000) and break up the data on the application side into chunks of 2K strings. But now I'm beginning to look into CLOBs in Oracle8. Does anyone have any experience using CLOBs?. Are they a little easier to use than LONGs? Do they allow wild card searches? Should I stick with varchar2? Does anyone have any other advice they can offer?

All guidance is appreciated.

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Ed Jennings
Database Engineer
Domain technologies, Inc.
e.jennings_at_domain-tech.com

The opinions expressed are my own and not those of Domain technologies.


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