Re: Working with BLOBS

"Jeremy" <newspostings_at_hazelweb.co.uk> wrote in message news:MPG.1a1a0aef6261430e98993a_at_news.individual.net...
> In article <1068497208.914442_at_yasure>, damorgan_at_x.washington.edu says...
> > Jeremy wrote:
> >
> > >Hi - PL/SQL Oracle 8i (8.1.7)
> > >
> > >We have a document stored in a BLOB. We know this is an RTF (rich text
> > >format) and it contains 'placeholders' (e.g. [last_name] which we then
> > >wish to substitute with the person's name).
> > >
> > >So we read the BLOB into a PL/SQL block - what is the most
> > >efficient/easiest way of performing our string replacements?
> > >
> > >If it were in a varchar2, we could simply say
> > >
> > > l_doc := replace(l_doc,'[last_name]',l_last_name);
> > >
> > >Is there an equivalent with BLOBS? Or do I need to read it in chunks
> > >into a varchar2, process it and then reassemble it as a new BLOB?
> > >
> > >Thanks for any pointeres here....
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > BLOB or CLOB? Because I don't think you'll find doing string
> > replacements in BLOBs
> > a particularly enjoyable activity.
> >
> > Either way ... the functionality is contained in the DBMS_LOB built-in
> > package.
> > Documentation is available at http://tahiti.oracle.com.
> >
>
> Thanks - it is character data in this case - RTF is all printable
> characters. It is stored in a generic documents table which may contain
> binary data as well, hence the BLOB data type chosen for storage.
>
> So... as it is very much CLOB....does this make it easier?
>
> --
>
> jeremy

Can't you just convert RTF to text and store it as a CLOB? That might make things easier for you.
There are converters available out there which do this....

Anurag Received on Mon Nov 10 2003 - 15:15:21 CST