Returning Oracle Columns > 4000 Chars

We run Oracle 8i (soon going to 9i) and interface to a Microsoft client application through ADO (ADO -> OLEDB for ODBC -> Microsoft ODBC Driver for Oracle).

My main question is whether if there is a way to return columns (or stored procedure out params) that are > 4000 characters (but not datatype LONG) using the MS OBDC driver for Oracle ?

I'm aware of the following:
1) the MS ODBC driver currently supports VARCHAR2 and LONG, but none of the LOB datatypes
2) VARCHAR2 columns cannot be defined as > 4000, although in PL/SQL VARCHAR2 variables can be up to 32767
3) we currently use the rowset functionality provided by the MS ODBC driver, so have been unable to use the MS OLE DB driver for Oracle (not that that's really applicable).

I also have some of 'sub-questions':
a) is the restriction in the MS drivers due to underlying Net8 restrictions ?
b) anyone have any idea if Microsoft is ever likely to support the LOB datatypes ? Or support returning PL/SQL VARCHAR2 parameters > 4000 ? c) I've heard a rumour that Oracle will discontinue support of the LONG datatype...is this true ? Received on Tue Dec 11 2001 - 08:33:13 CST