How to store a PDF in a BLOB column, then select/search it using SQL?

Question

We have a simple requirement.
(1.) We have an Oracle 10g DB.
(2.) We want to store PDFs/MS Word docs inside BLOB column in a table.
(3.) We need to show PDF/MS Word content to the user, without opening the PDFs/MS World like we normally do (i.e. Using PDV reader/ MS Word).
(4.) i.e. We need to use SQL statements and
      (a.) Get all contents of the PDF/MS WORD doc.
      (b.) Search for specific strings inside these docs in the BLOB columns.How to do this pls? Code sample would be really great.
Edited by: user12240205 on Jul 18, 2012 9:35 PM
Edited by: user12240205 on Jul 18, 2012 9:37 PM

Answer 1

rp0428 wrote:
>
We have a simple requirement.
>
Really? You mean as opposed to a requirement that might actually be doable?Could be that simple is used as in stupid ? Like in, "+look at this simply idiotic requirement, blah.. blah...+"? ;-)
@user12240205:
BLOBs contains binary data. Not text data. How do you propose to search binary data for strings?
PDF and Word formats include actual text strings and identifiers as part of the formatting. How do you propose that this be identified and ignored when searching for specific strings in the document's content?
PL/SQL does not have the ability to take a page from a PDF/Word document, highlight the search string, and display that to the client. A format-parser is needed to parse the PDF/Word format and generate that as content (e.g. HTML or XML) that can be rendered by a client. How do you propose PL/SQL serves up search strings that it found, when it cannot interpret the document format? (cannot even say what page, section or paragraph, that search string occurs)
Documents can be loaded via the DBMS_LOB interface. Either from the db server's file system, or by the client supplying the document as chunks for "write appending" to a BLOB. See Oracle® Database PL/SQL Packages and Types Reference guide for details.
Text search and document indexing are supported by an Oracle feature called Content Management<a> (which includes interMedia, UltraSearch, Oracle Text, etc).
Oracle also supports (on Window server platforms), the Microsoft Component Object Model (COM). COM interfaces (such as COM for Word) can be used for specialised processing (e.g. searching Word documents). Oracle's COM feature allows one to interface directly with external s/w (e.g. MS Word) via its COM interface.