External locations and security

When working with digital objects, it is inevitable that the database administrator will need to configure some type of external access to load external files into the database server. There are four available methods that can be used, each one using very different loading methods.

Oracle directory

A number of external access points can be used when accessing external files. The directory is one that Oracle Multimedia uses. Others include utl_file and it is also possible to use Java to access directories directly. But let's first define an external directory that the multimedia schema can access.

The following is an example on Windows:

create or replace directory LOADING_DIR as
    'C:\multimedia_files';

The following is an example on Unix:

create directory LOADING_DIR as '/u01/multimedia_files';

Granting access to a directory

Once created, access to the directory can be given using Oracle grants:

grant read on directory LOADING_DIR to multimedia;

Access is also implicitly...