Oracle XML CLOB out of memory error

Question

I am running several of Oracle's XML tools
to store large XML documents in Oracle.
I am successful with a 3 MB file, but not
with a 20 MB file. I get an "out of memory"
exception in LobPlsqlUtil.class.
The CLOB is accessed through the method
CLOB.getCharacterStream(), which is then
handed off to an XMLParser class. The
exact exception is below:
Any ideas? Thanks, Rich
==========================================
Unhandled exception breakpoint occurred at line 135 in file [D:\programs\jdev\jdbc\lib\oracle8.1.7\classes12.zip]\oracle\sql\LobPlsqlUtil.class: java.lang.OutOfMemoryError.
==============================

Answer 1

I have some more information to add to the
original post. I found that if I access the
CLOB very fast then I can get all 20 MB of
data from the CLOB. If I access it slowly
(meaning that I pass CLOB.getCharacterStream
to a parser) then it fails.
I wrote my own InputStream as a wrapper
around CLOB, using the CLOB.getChars()
function. If I pass this input stream to
a parser (one of Oracles, or Xerces) and
get the data chunks on demand, it still
fails. If, instead, I read all the CLOB
data as fast as possible, and buffer it
locally before passing it on to the parser,
then I get all 20 MB. Go figure!!
Also, when the CLOB reading fails, it doesn't
help to get a new ResultSet, or to close and
open a new Connection and try to start where
it left off.