Managing LOB data types

The LOB data management includes its interaction with the loading interface, data manipulation strategies, and selection of the LOB data. The section makes certain recommendations to manage internal LOBs, BFILEs, and temporary LOBs.

Managing internal LOBs

An internal LOB data type that is, a CLOB or BLOB data type column can be interacted through supported interfaces such as DBMS_LOB, JDBC, or OLE object structure. In PL/SQL, LOB data is majorly managed through the DBMS_LOB package which provides a wide variety of subprograms to populate the LOB data, manipulate it, and extract relevant information such as length, size, and so on.

Few of the recommendations to manage the internal LOB are as follows:

• The LOB column can be initialized as NULL using EMPTY_BLOB() or EMPTY_CLOB() functions.

• A CLOB can be populated through SQL or a text file loaded from a PL/SQL program. A BLOB should always be loaded through a PL/SQL block.

• Use of DBMS_LOB package is preferable for the LOB...