Apex 4.0 display image item :BLOB column returned by SQL statement

Question

Hello
I'm creating an display image item in apex 4.0. The source is a BLOB column returned by SQL statement.
When I'm issuing an sql statement like this:
   select lado.blob_content
   from   large_documents      lado
   ,        large_doc_headers    ladh
   where lado.ladh_nr = ladh.nr
   more criteriait works fine.
When I create a function inside a package with the same query (in a cursor)
function get_image(some parameters in) return blob
Following in apex by:
select get_image(some parameters) from dualI get a
ORA-06502: PL/SQL: numeric or value error: character string buffer too smallAnybody any idea why this does not work?
Regards Erik

Answer 1

Hi Eric,
the environment assumes varchar2-output by default, which will be limited to 32767 characters and may have problems with binary formats. You could define a blob-variable to select the value into.
DECLARE
  l_blob BLOB;
BEGIN
  SELECT get_image(some parameters)
    INTO l_blob
    FROM dual;
END;
/If you expect the BLOB-Content to be text (you should consider CLOB then), you may use UTL_RAW.CAST_TO_VARCHAR2 to convert the content. If your object is larger than the maximum varchar2 size, or you want to convert BLOB to CLOB, you might be interested in some converter like described here: {message:id=559749}
Hope this is what you were searching for.
-Udo