Oracle Long Data type Problem

Question

Hi,
I am using ORACLE 7.3.4 database. I am having a problem in updating a column of long datatype in a table t1 with another column from table t2 of long datatype. I have tried setting LONG 1000000 also but this doesn't work. I appreciate any kind of suggestions.
The error it gives is ORA-00997: illegal use of LONG datatype.
Thanks
Reddy

Answer 1

I had the same problem too with a newest thin driver. I found that I can read all my characters (bytes) using getBinaryStream() and single-byte read(), but read() never returns -1; instead reading the character before last causes the ArrayOutOfBoundsException you mentioned.
So I just blindly caught the exception and let it go to QA. (sort of
InputStream r = rs.getBinaryStream(field);
if(r == null) ...
StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer();
try { for(int c = -1;  (c = r.read()) != -1;)  sb.append((char) c); }
catch(IndexOutOfBoundsException e)
{} // ignore Oracle idiosyncrazy.
finally { r.close(); }
). Please note that getCharacterStream() or getAsciiStream() did not work for me. I did not try deprecated getUnicodeStream(): I decided I would better correctly extract characters in Java from binary data myself if I need them rather than allowing this junky thin Oracle driver to do an extra thing for me.