Read BLOB data

Hi,

I have a table with the following columns:

ID                NOT NULL NUMBER
TS                TIMESTAMP(9)
SENDER            VARCHAR2(128)
RECIPIENT         VARCHAR2(128)
FILENAME          VARCHAR2(1024)
UNREPAIRABLE      NUMBER(1)
DATA              BLOB

I'm trying to find a way to take the BLOB data and convert it into some kind of readable format. One method I'm looking at is using the
"dbms_loc.substr" function in a select statement in an attempt to read
the BLOB data. But all I get from the result are characters strung together in one long string. My select statement is this:

"select dbms_lob.substr(data,100,1) from virus_quarantine"

Am I limiting myself by using this function or is there another more versatile method I can use to convert this BLOB data into a human-readable format?

Thank you, Received on Tue Dec 09 2003 - 19:01:11 CST