The future with Oracle and text files on the DB

As many of you know, working client/server (Forms 4.5/5.0) with large text files (> 32 kb) stored in the database is not as easily achieved as one might hope. There are many "fixes" proposed, including a) chunking by line into a one-to-many of varchar2 segments on the database (not easy to view in a form's text area, but easy to search and manipulate in PL/SQL), b) foregoing manipulation of the text in PL/SQL or display in forms by using Pro*C, Powerbuilder, Java or some other technical solution, or c) Ensuring that no text files greater than 32 kb make it to the DB.

None of these are terribly appealing if you're trying to leverage Oracle technology from back-end to front-end. Oracle has provided developers with some OLE and image support in the forms, but has not given us generic upload/download of binary files, or lack of restriction on text file display in a form or manipulation in PL/SQL.

I'm wondering what the direction of Forms 6.0 is going to provide in this area (apparently due 1999Q1)? There seems to be some improvement in the support of BLOBs in Forms 6.0/PLSQL8, but it is not clear to me whether this will support those developers who are interested in direct manipulation and display of large (>32 kb) text data stored on the database. Also, if these capabilities will exist in Forms6.0, will they be leveraging objects and/or PLSQL8 such that they are not compatible with 7.x server versions?

Any insight you can provide on this matter would be greatly appreciated. Oracle's intro papers (http://www.oracle.com/tools/dev2k/future.html) are a bit brief.

   Thanks in advance,

Steve Franklin Received on Wed Jan 27 1999 - 00:40:33 CET