LONG RAW and BLOB

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1

Hi,

webMethods uses LONG RAW data type in it’s oracle schemas a lot, from the old ATC Schema to new BAM solutions.

Anyone knows advantage of using LONG RAW over BLOB? my dba find LONG RAW a trouble to handle in large databases

2

Hi chirag_sanghavi,
The LONG RAW data type stores raw data of up to 32760 bytes which is 7 bytes lower than
VARCHAR2 data type in oracle. The main difference between these two data type is that the
data in a LONG RAW variable is not interpreted by PL/SQL.This means that Oracle will not
perform character set conversions on RAW data when it is moved from one system
(based, for example, on 7-bit ASCII) to another system. This improves the performance as there is
no overhead of character set conversions.
Whereas,the BLOB data type is used to store large binary objects “out of line” inside the
database. A BLOB variable contains a locator, which then points to the large binary object.
BLOBs can be up to four gigabytes in size, and they participate fully in transactions.

Hope this helps.

Thanks,
RKK

3

Hi Kishore,

Thanks for providing the info.
I wonder, why webMethods continues to use LONG RAW for storing critical information…