Re: Storing Binary Data in varchar2 fields

Sybrand Bakker <gooiditweg_at_nospam.demon.nl> wrote in message news:<m1iuev453p1qk4jv2qram0pjuugrn2mgjp_at_4ax.com>...
> On 17 Jun 2003 03:22:22 -0700, barkeref_at_sigcomp.com (Ed Barker) wrote:
>
> >If my conclusions are correct, it seems strange (i.e. a deficiency in
> >the product) that there is no data type similar to varchar2 but that
> >tells Oracle to not perform any character translation. raw seemed to
> >serve this purpose, but the docs say not to use it anymore.
> >
> >Can any of the gurus confirm or refute my conclusions?
>
>
> The deprecation of RAWs affect LONG RAWs.
>
> Also you have BLOBs nowadays (Binary Large OBjects) so I don't see why
> you insist on misusing a varchar2 for binary data.
>
>
> Sybrand Bakker, Senior Oracle DBA
>
> To reply remove -verwijderdit from my e-mail address

Thanks for the reply.

As I said in my posting, blobs appear to have a much more cumbersome interface (from ProC anyway), they require multiple trips to the database since you have to work through locators, and I have been told their performance is not as good as varchar2.

The point of my posting was to get confirmation of these assertions. Again, this table is the corner stone of our system. The volumne of inserts and updates is high, and performance is critical.

I thought the L in LOB and BLOB stands for Large. Should I really be using a blob to store 400 bytes of binary data?

I don't want to misuse varchar2. I want a binary datatype that is suitable for my small amount of binary data. Received on Tue Jun 17 2003 - 17:26:01 CDT