Modifying MS WORD documents stored in BLOBS. (Oracle 9i Release 9.2.0.4.0)
275851Jan 18 2006 — edited Jan 18 2006I have a need to replace a string of characters in an MS Word document that is stored in a BLOB field in an Oracle 9i database.
Background: We have a large number of MS Word documents (~50,000) and many of them contain links to other Word documents stored on various servers throughout our network. We are moving a number of these servers, thus invalidating these links. I need to be able to update these links without having to open up every one of these documents and doing it manually.
Is it possible, using PL/SQL, to update these links in these MS Word documents that are stored in Oracle? I have currently written a quick PL/SQL routine that will find the links and provide their location within the document, but I am not sure how I can update them. The problem, as I see it, is that if the characters that I am replacing differ in length than those that are currently in the existing document, then I would have to shift the remaining bytes of the document either left or right to preserve the integrity of the document.
Is this possible, or should I pursue another option?