Illegal use of LONG datatype error message when i create materialized view

Question

Hello to all
I want create read only materialized view replication environment two of our tables have LONG datatype when i create materialized view against on them
I recieve this error message
CREATE MATERIALIZED VIEW MDB.TOAD_PLAN_TABLE TABLESPACE aramis REFRESH FORCE WITH ROWID AS SELECT * FROM MDB.TOAD_PLAN_TABLE@arahisto
Error report:
SQL Error: ORA-00997: illegal use of LONG datatype
00997. 00000 - "illegal use of LONG datatype"
Do you know any resort solution for it?
thanks

Answer 1

You can not use longs in materialized views over a database link, you can however take a part of a long over to a materialized view.
I have gotten this to work in the past l had to create a PL/SQL function that you can use to extract the character data from the long column and use that to
as part of the function you will need to pass in the columns of the table that will identify the unique records so you can pick out the long column
example function
-- you will need to make sure this funtion is in the remote location as you can not select longs accross a DB LINK.
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION MDB.TOAD_PLAN_LONG_CONV
(pass in the primary key columns for the table)
RETURN VARCHAR2
IS
v_long VARCHAR2(32767) ;
BEGIN
BEGIN
-- need to select the long column into the PL/SQL variable
SELECT long_column
INTO v_long
FROM MDB.TOAD_PLAN_TABLE
WHERE key_columns = passed columns ;
EXCEPTION
WHEN OTHERS THEN
IF SQLCODE = '-01406' THEN
NULL ;
ELSE
RAISE ;
END IF ;
END ;
RETURN SUBSTR(v_long,1,4000) ;
END ;
Then when you create the materialized view utilize that function on the long column.
create or replace materialized view MDB.TOAD_PLAN_TABLE TABLESPACE aramis REFRESH FORCE WITH ROWID
AS
SELECT column1, .... columnx,
MDB.TOAD_PLAN_LONG_CONV@arahisto (primary key column list) as long_column_name
FROM MDB.TOAD_PLAN_TABLE@arahisto ;
See if this will work for you? Keep in mind however this solution will not get the entire long column only as much as a PL/SQL variable will hold of it.
Mike