Using Oracle Text to search through WORD, EXCEL and PDF documents

Question

Hello again,
What I would like to know is if I have a WORD or PDF document stored in a table. Is it possible to use Oracle Text to search through the actual WORD or PDF document?
Thanks
Doug

Answer 1

Yes you can do context sensitive searches on both PDF and Word docs. With the PDF you need to make sure they are text and not images. Some scanners will create PDFs that are nothing more than images of document.
Below is code sample that I made some time back to demonstrate the searching capabilities of Oracle Text. Note that the example makes use of the inso_filter that is no longer shipped with Oracle begging with Patch set 10.1.0.4. See metalink note 298017.1 for the changes. See the following link for more information on developing with Oracle Text.
http://download-west.oracle.com/docs/cd/B14117_01/text.101/b10729/toc.htm
begin example.
-- The following needs to be executed
-- as sys.
DROP DIRECTORY docs_dir;
CREATE OR REPLACE DIRECTORY docs_dir
AS 'C:\sql\oracle_text\documents';
GRANT READ ON DIRECTORY docs_dir TO text;
-- End sys ran SQL
DROP TABLE db_docs CASCADE CONSTRAINTS PURGE;
CREATE TABLE db_docs (
id NUMBER,
format VARCHAR2(10),
location VARCHAR2(50),
document BLOB,
CONSTRAINT i_db_docs_p PRIMARY KEY(id)
-- Several notes need to be made about this anonymous block.
-- First the 'DOCS_DIR' parameter is a directory object name.
-- This directory object name must be in upper case.
DECLARE
f_lob BFILE;
b_lob BLOB;
document_name VARCHAR2(50);
BEGIN
document_name := 'externaltables.doc';
INSERT INTO db_docs
VALUES (1, 'binary', 'C:\sql\oracle_text\documents\externaltables.doc', empty_blob())
RETURN document INTO b_lob;
f_lob := BFILENAME('DOCS_DIR', document_name);
DBMS_LOB.FILEOPEN(f_lob, DBMS_LOB.FILE_READONLY);
DBMS_LOB.LOADFROMFILE(b_lob, f_lob, DBMS_LOB.GETLENGTH(f_lob));
DBMS_LOB.FILECLOSE(f_lob);
COMMIT;
END;
-- build the index
-- Note that this index differs than the file system stored file
-- in that paramter datastore is ctxsys.defautl_datastore and not
-- ctxsys.file_datastore. FILE_DATASTORE is for documents that
-- exist on the file system. DEFAULT_DATASTORE is for documents
-- that are stored in the column.
create index db_docs_ctx on db_docs(document)
indextype is ctxsys.context
parameters (
'datastore ctxsys.default_datastore
filter ctxsys.inso_filter
format column format');
--search for something that is known to not be in the document.
SELECT SCORE(1), id, location
FROM db_docs
WHERE CONTAINS(document, 'Jenkinson', 1) > 0;
--search for something that is known to be in the document.  
SELECT SCORE(1), id, location
FROM db_docs
WHERE CONTAINS(document, 'Albright', 1) > 0;