Help: Extract OLE object from 8i (long raw) to a server file folder

Question

Posting here because most of the technical discussion I have found are in this group (Forms).
I have an 8i db with workpapers(.doc,.xls,etc) stored in a Long Raw column wrapped in OLE that were collected using forms. The DB is maintained on a Sun Solaris platform.
I need to extract the documents and write each one to a server folder as a .doc or ,xls without any OLE details.
Is this possible? How?

Answer 1

As far as I know you have to use OLE Item to work with the information. Unfortunately there is not any standart way to extract a source document from OLE. Some applications such as Word, Excel support OLE Automation, so you could use OLE2 package to save the document as a file, that is the easest way. But others don't, so you may have to use an undocumented way to extract a document.
Take a look at the following thread:
Subj: 6i to 9i Ole to LOB translations, How do you know the App. server?
Re: 6i to 9i Ole to LOB translations, How do you know the App. server?
P.S. If you can't extract some types of your documents, please let me khow.
P.P.S. To extract a document through OLE2 package you could use something like the following. /I'm not sure the code is correct/:
DECLARE
handle ole2.obj_type;
BEGIN
ACTIVATE_SERVER('OLE1');
handle := forms_ole.get_interface_pointer('OLE1');
BEGIN
-- Save a document to disk
Args :=OLE2.CREATE_ARGLIST;
OLE2.ADD_ARG(Args, 'C:\test.doc'); -- file name
OLE2.INVOKE(handle, 'SaveAs', Args);
OLE2.DESTROY_ARGLIST(Args);
EXCEPTION WHEN OTHERS THEN
Message('Error');
END;
-- OLE2.RELEASE_OBJ(handle);
END;