Re: Searching through BLOBS & BFILES

jdwatson1_at_gmail.com wrote:
> Hi,
> I am not 100% sure what the best solution would be, so I was hoping
> someone could point me in the right direction.
>
> I usually develop in MS tools, such as .net, ASP, SQL Server etc...,
> but I really want to expand my skillset and learn as much about Oracle
> as possible.
>
> What I need to do, is design a DB that will index and store
> approximately 300 word docs, each with a size no more that 400KB. They
> need to be able to seacrh the word documents for keyword/phrases to be
> able to identify which one to use.
>
> So, I need to write 2 web interfaces. A front end and a back end. Front
> end for the users who will search for their documents, and a backend
> for an admin person to upload new/ammended documents to the DB to be
> searchable.
>
> NOW..... I could do this in the usual MS tools that I work with using
> BLOB's and the built in Full-text searching that comes with SQL Server,
> but i don't have these to work with.
>
> What I was hoping someone could help me out with was identifying the
> best possible solution to use.
>
> 1. Should I use a BLOB or BFILE data type & why would i use one over
> the other?
>
> 2. Does Oracle 8 support full text searching of a word document once it
> is loaded into the *LOB column & how would I do this?
>
> 3. Is there a way to export the Word Doc From the *LOB colum and dump
> it into a PDF format (I guess I am asking if someone has seen or
> written a PDF generator script for Oracle)?
>
> If someone could help me out, it would be greatly appreciated.
>
> cheers,
> James

1. BLOBs are preferable because they are under database control and can't be changed without db not knowing it, and they are a bit easier to work with, at least in my view.
2. There is full text indexing engine, called ConText in Oracle 8 (now Oracle Text). You need to familiarize yourself with its documentation, which is freely available at http://tahiti.oracle.com
3. I am not aware of such tool. There is PL/PDF toolkit (http://www.plpdf.com,) but it's for PDF generation, not conversion. If Oracle is on Windows, you may try to use COM Automation (afaik, Enterprise Edition option) and any Windows-based conversion tool controlled via COM you are familiar with to do the conversion.

Hth,

    Vladimir M. Zakharychev
    N-Networks, makers of Dynamic PSP(tm)     http://www.dynamicpsp.com Received on Mon Jun 12 2006 - 11:07:16 CDT