Friday, April 23, 2010

CLOB datatype in Oracle

You use the CLOB datatype to store large blocks of character data in the database, in-line or out-of-line. Both fixed-width and variable-width character sets are supported. Every CLOB variable stores a locator, which points to a large block of character data. The size of a CLOB cannot exceed four gigabytes.

CLOBs participate fully in transactions, are recoverable, and can be replicated. Changes made by package DBMS_LOB can be committed or rolled back. CLOB locators can span transactions (for reads only), but they cannot span sessions.