Changing a VARCHAR(2) to BLOB Data type

Question

I am trying to change a VARCHAR(2) data type into a BLOB. I have researched the web and found what I thought was the solution. That was to create a new column that was a BLOB, copy the information from the column I what to modify into it, then delete the original column and rename the BLOB column to that original name.
However I am getting error messages such as…
ORA-00904: "CUSTOMER2"."Cust_Firstname": invalid identifier
When I issue this statement:
UPDATE CUSTOMER2 SET "CUSTOMER2"."Cust_Firstname"=Temp_Name;
or
ORA-00904: "CUSTOMER2"."Temp_Name": invalid identifier
When I issue this statement:
UPDATE CUSTOMER2 SET "CUSTOMER2"."Cust_Firstname"="CUSTOMER2"."Temp_Name";
Or
And I have gotten an error message saying update failed was expecting a numeric got BLOB.
I have UPDATED the table…
SQL>Alter table CUSTOMER2 ADD Temp_Name BLOB;
Table altered.
0.74 seconds
Does anyone have any ideas? All help would be very much appreciated!
-Robert

Answer 1

Hello Robert,
first, I don't see which part of your question concerns APEX. There is {forum:id=75} where you probably get best input for your problem.
Anyhow, just a few things you might think about before posting there.
I am trying to change a VARCHAR(2) data type into a BLOBI'm not sure if you really want this to be a BLOB. Ususally, if text fields get too small, you'd use CLOB. Again, I'd guess the 4000 bytes you can easily store in a VARCHAR2 (not VARCHAR(2), right? this would be a two byte text field) would be sufficient for what I would expect to find in a column named "Cust_Firstname".
UPDATE CUSTOMER2 SET "CUSTOMER2"."Cust_Firstname"=Temp_Name;Is this the actual code? I guess you didn't create the column "Cust_Firstname" with double quotes. Double quotes enable case sensitive handling, so "Cust_Firstname" is different from "cust_firstname" or "CUST_FIRSTNAME". The latter version would be the default if no quotes are used, i.e. everything is handled as it were in upper case.
Concerning your assignment order: If "Temp_Name" is the new BLOB column, you wouldn't want "Cust_Firstname" to be overwritten with that empty value.
If I understood you right, you want to transfer the value from "Cust_Firstname" (which is VARCHAR2) to "Temp_Name", which you created as BLOB. You should change the order in the update statement then.
-Udo