Book Image

Managing Multimedia and Unstructured Data in the Oracle Database

By : MARCEL KRATOCHVIL
Book Image

Managing Multimedia and Unstructured Data in the Oracle Database

By: MARCEL KRATOCHVIL

Overview of this book

Multimedia is the new digital frontier. Managers, software architects, administrators and developers need to fully comprehend this exciting new technology as its widespread use and acceptance cannot be ignored any longer."Managing Multimedia and Unstructured Data in the Oracle Database" will give you a complete understanding of how to manage all data, especially multimedia. You will learn all the latest terminology, how to set up a database, load digital objects, search on them and even how to sell them. Whether you are a manager or database administrator, this book will give you the knowledge you need to take control of this rapidly growing and industry- changing technology. Technology which is transforming our lives.Starting with the basic principles of unstructured data and detailing the concepts behind multimedia warehouses and digital asset management systems, this book will describe how to load this data, search against it, display it intelligently, and deliver it to customers and users. Learn how all these concepts work within the Oracle 11g R2 database environment and how to tune the database effectively to manage it.Begin to learn about this new and exciting field and use it to give your business a competitive edge or give yourself the ability to take a leadership role in this exciting new computing genre.
Table of Contents (22 chapters)
Managing Multimedia and Unstructured Data in the Oracle Database
Credits
About the Author
Acknowledgement
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Where does Oracle Multimedia fit in?


The Oracle Database supports three types of binary data types:

  • Binary Large Object (BLOB): This is a data type that contains binary data. Two structures exist in Oracle. The traditional one is called BASIC and a newer faster one, which was introduced in Oracle 11, is called SECUREFILES. The BASIC format will be desupported in a later release. The BLOB replaces the LONG data type which was the standard data type for any binary data. The LONG data type had a number of key limitations including only one being allowed per table and minimal support for controlling its storage. As of Oracle11g a BLOB does not have a maximum size.

  • Character Large Object (CLOB): This is a lob designed for text data. It is very similar in behavior to a VARCHAR of unlimited length. In Oracle 11g the difference is minor and text functions can be applied to a CLOB. A CLOB is useful for storing XML data. A CLOB is controlled by the database character set, whereas if an NCLOB is...