The challenge to manage information in a database has never been an iced cake. Besides the fundamental support to data integrity, security, and optimal storage mechanisms, the support to varied natures of data was equally challenging. With the growing demands of application development, the nature of large and unstructured data has been transformed from character based to binary based information.
Prior to the introduction of LOB data types in Oracle 8 Release, the LONG and LONG RAW data types used to serve as the storage type for large data. Numerous limitations associated with LONG data types and the need of a stable storage mechanism for unstructured data led to the evolution of LOB data types and set the stage for SecureFiles. While the character based large files are identified as CLOB, the unstructured binary files are treated as BLOB. Even the binary files which are OS location dependent can be stored in the database through a locator as BFILE...