LOBs(Large Objects) In Oracle

In Oracle, Large Objects is a set of built in a type, which provides an efficient code generation for the predefined operations and a better performance than the user defined type.

 

The basic division of type system is a user defined types or the abstract type and built in types, which are already supported by Oracle 8i.



In Oracle, the new data types have also been added to store long data, which are known as LOBs (large objects).

There are some data types, which are-

• BLOB(Binary Large Object)
• CLOB(Character Large Object)
• NCLOB(National character set large object)
• BFILE(Binary file)

BLOB, CLOB and NCLOB data types are stored in the database and are known as internal LOBs. Oracle supports the data integrity and concurrency for internal LOBs.

BFILE is not stored in the database and Oracle does not validate, whether the file exists or not , when a record is inserted, using BFILE type.

Binary Large Object stores any data in a binary format. It is used for multimedia such as images, audio and video.

Character LOBs stores a single-byte character data. It is used for a large string or documents.

 

National Character Large Object stores the string data in the database in form of national character large objects. It is used for a large string or documents.

Binary File stores outside the database in the host operating system file system. BFILE accesses your Application, basis of read-only.

Thus, we learnt, LOBs (Large Objects), which provides the code generation for the predefined operations and the better performance.