Re: BLOBs

In article <3B2FEFD4.76518AC9_at_justin.com>, root says...
>
>Hi. I have a quick question.
>
>I have enherited a table that has a column that contains BLOBs.
>
>Is there any way of finding out what kind of data this contains?
>
>Obviously, SQLplus can't display it, and even if I get the data out
>using a perl program or the like, I have no way of knowing what format
>the data is in.
>
>I'm new to this stuff, and have no access to the programs that would
>have created the BLOBs in the first place.
>
>Thanks for any pointers.
>
>justin
>

select utl_raw.cast_to_varchar2( dbms_lob.substr( BLOB_COL, 2000, 1 ) ) from t
where rownum < 5

will dump the first 4 rows to screen "as is".

utl_raw might not be installed, to install it

o cd $ORACLE_HOME/rdbms/admin
o using SVRMGRL connect as sys or internal o @utlraw
o @prvtrawb.plb

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Thomas Kyte (tkyte@us.oracle.com)             http://asktom.oracle.com/ 
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