Re: Working with BLOBS

Jeremy wrote:

>Hi - PL/SQL Oracle 8i (8.1.7)
>
>We have a document stored in a BLOB. We know this is an RTF (rich text
>format) and it contains 'placeholders' (e.g. [last_name] which we then
>wish to substitute with the person's name).
>
>So we read the BLOB into a PL/SQL block - what is the most
>efficient/easiest way of performing our string replacements?
>
>If it were in a varchar2, we could simply say
>
> l_doc := replace(l_doc,'[last_name]',l_last_name);
>
>Is there an equivalent with BLOBS? Or do I need to read it in chunks
>into a varchar2, process it and then reassemble it as a new BLOB?
>
>Thanks for any pointeres here....
>
>
>

BLOB or CLOB? Because I don't think you'll find doing string replacements in BLOBs
a particularly enjoyable activity.

Either way ... the functionality is contained in the DBMS_LOB built-in package.
Documentation is available at http://tahiti.oracle.com.

-- 
Daniel Morgan
http://www.outreach.washington.edu/ext/certificates/oad/oad_crs.asp
http://www.outreach.washington.edu/ext/certificates/aoa/aoa_crs.asp
damorgan_at_x.washington.edu
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