Re: Storing Binary Data in varchar2 fields

Ed Barker wrote:

> We have a need to define a table that will store a variable amount of
> binary data in a column. The length will be less than 4000 bytes.
>
> I have been told that there is overhead involved when using blob
> fields. This is an OLTP app with heavy traffic (select, update).
> Performance in updating and selecting this data is critical. This
> binary data will never be part of our selection criteria, but we will
> always be returning it in our queries and we will be updating it.
>
> Since the length of our data is small, we were hoping to avoid that
> overhead by making the column varchar2. However, I have read some
> information that indicates that I can not store binary data in a
> varchar2 field because Oracle will perform translations.
>
> I have also read that the raw datatype is merely varchar2 without any
> translation, which sounds like what I want. However, the docs
> indicate that blobs should be used as of 8i (we are using 9.2).
>
> My questions are:
>
> - Is there really a performance hit when using blobs?
>
> - Can I safely use varchar2?
>
> Thanks for any help.

Go to http://tahiti.oracle.com and as your seach criterion put in "RAW" AND "DATATYPE"

--
Daniel Morgan
http://www.outreach.washington.edu/extinfo/certprog/oad/oad_crs.asp
damorgan_at_x.washington.edu
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