How to use BFILE/BLOB

Question

Hi,
I'm using forms6i.
I want to save a file(may be of any format, eg .doc,.html,.xls,...) in the database.
And when we query that field, say if we saved a .doc file,when we query , the file should open as a word document.
How can this be done?
Thanks

Answer 1

ORA-22285: non-existent directoryYou have to create a database directory first:
create directory ....
and copy the local file to that directory on the db server. I am assuming Forms 6i client/server here, so can do this with a HOST command.
Then you can use dbms_lob with a simple procedure like this:
create or replace procedure blob_from_file
(i_directory in varchar2
,i_filename in varchar2
,io_blob in out nocopy blob
is
   l_file       bfile;
begin
   l_file := bfilename(i_directory, i_filename);
   dbms_lob.fileopen(l_file, dbms_lob.file_readonly);
   dbms_lob.createtemporary (io_blob, false);
   dbms_lob.loadfromfile(io_blob, l_file, dbms_lob.lobmaxsize,1 ,1 );
   dbms_lob.fileclose(l_file);
end;i_directory is not the machine directory (c:\...) but the Oracle database directory.