All the functions mentioned in this section are applicable to internal LOBs only, except
ora-lob-load-from-file
.
Before modifying a LOB, the corresponding record must be locked. See the discussion in Locking.
If you make several modifications to a LOB which has functional or domain indexes, it is useful to wrap several calls of modifying functions in a pair of
ora-lob-open
and
ora-lob-close
. That means that the indexes will be updated once (when
ora-lob-close
is called), which saves work. Note that after a call to
ora-lob-open
,
ora-lob-close
must be called before any call to
commit
.
To append the contents of one LOB to another, use
ora-lob-append
.
You can copy all or part of a LOB into another LOB using
ora-lob-copy
.
ora-lob-load-from-file
loads the data from a file LOB into an (internal) LOB.
You can erase (that is, fill with the 0 byte or with Space character) all or part of a LOB using
ora-lob-erase
.
You can reduce the size of a LOB using
ora-lob-trim
.
If you need to make multiple updates to a LOB you can optionally create a transaction using
ora-lob-open
and
ora-lob-close
call. This may save work on the server side.