Chapter 14: Large Objects

In this chapter, you will

• Be introduced to large objects (LOBs)

• See files whose content will be used to populate example LOBs

• Understand the differences between the different types of LOBs

• Create tables containing LOBs

• Use LOBs in SQL

• Use LOBs in PL/SQL

• Use LONG and LONG RAW types

• Examine some of the Oracle Database 10 g enhancements to LOBs

Introducing Large Objects (LOBs)

Today s applications and web sites demand more than just the storage and retrieval of text and numbers : they may also require multimedia to make the user experience friendlier. Because of this, databases are now being called upon to store things like images, sounds, and video. Prior to the release of Oracle8, you had to store large blocks of character data using the LONG database type, and large blocks of binary data had to be stored using either the LONG RAW type or the shorter RAW type.

After the release of Oracle8 a new class of types known as large objects (LOBs) was introduced. LOBs may be used to store binary data, character data, and references to external files. LOBs are widely used to store documents such as Word and PDF documents. LOBs can store a maximum of 128 terabytes of data depending on the block size of your database.