CLOB
71981Mar 22 2006 — edited Mar 22 2006I have never seen an occasion to use a CLOB datatype and I am wondering why it is in the Oracle database? BLOB I can understand, but CLOB
huh?
The reason for this question is as follows
Recently I had an assignment to create a DBMS_JOB to notify via email of some condition in the database. The email address is available and so I can use UTL_SMTP to create a message that will include a variable amount of character data length unknown that results from a query. Could be 1 line could be 300 lines, could be 3000 lines.
I have been advised that I should stuff the query results into a CLOB then send that CLOB over to a mail server that will then un-stuff it and send it out using mailx.
I see no advantage to this use of the CLOB since I can merely call the UTL-SMTP line by line and accomplish the same result. There appears to me to be a lot of overhead in working the CLOB into this scenario.
I was told that repeated calls to UTL_SMTP will generate overhead that would exceed that of the recommended CLOB method.
Any thoughts on this out there? Any CLOB proponents? Is CLOB a strictly Oracle phemomena?
Please pardon my naivety!