Re: Converting Crystal Report BLOB to VARCHAR2

Tom Urbanowicz wrote:

> We have a process by which Crystal and InfoMaker reports are
> registered and stored as BLOBs in an Oracle 8i (or higher) database. I
> have a process in which I convert the BLOB to a VARCHAR2 using
> dbms_lob.read and utl_raw.cast_to_varchar2.
>
> Once in this datatype, I use INSTR to identify if a specific value
> exists in the newly-converted, intelligible string. For InfoMaker
> reports, this works great. However, for Crystal reports, the string is
> still in a useless, unintelligible format.
>
> Has anyone encountered and solved this dilemna before--trying to
> convert a Crystal report (as a BLOB) into a meaningful VARCHAR2
> string?

Conceptually it makes no sense to think that a BLOB can become a VARCHAR2.

-- 
Daniel A. Morgan
University of Washington
damorgan_at_x.washington.edu
(replace 'x' with 'u' to respond)