Oracle 8 LOB (Long or Large Object) Columns The Oracle 8.0.4 ODBC driver was the first version supplied by Oracle that conformed to the ODBC version 3 API specification. The drivers released prior to this ODBC API only supported level 2 compliance of the version 2.5 specification. The first versions of this driver allowed READ accesses to the new LOB column data types in Oracle 8. Starting with version 8.0.5.1.x, write access was also allowed10. In order to access the LOB data types you simply bind them as the appropriate ODBC data type (LONG VARCHAR, LONG VARBINARY) as you would LONG or LONG RAW columns, or use the new ODBC API data types that Oracle registered with Microsoft11 (BLOB, CLOB). [Note: A SQLDescribeCol may report the new data types] These new data type declarations should be included with the MDAC 2.0 and later releases from Microsoft, but for compatibility, you should simply use the appropriate LONG VARxxxx type. |