I migrated an Oracle 7.3.3.6 DATABASE to 8.1.7 AND HAVE many LONG and LONG RAW columns I want to convert to BLOB and CLOB.

what it the fastest way of doing it ?

-- Eli Leiba (elileiba@netvision.net.il), February 17, 2001

Answers

Although Oracle provides some guidance in its literature, the native process for converting LONG columns to LOBs can be manually intensive. Fortunately, BMC Software provides a product that automates the process of making complex databases changes. The product is called PATROL DB-Change Manager. With this product it is a relatively simple matter to change the data type of your LONG columns to the appropriate LOB type. The product analyzes your logical changes and generates a production-ready script that can be scheduled for execution to implement the actual physical database changes that must be performed to make the requested changes. Changing columns from LONG to LOB will require tables to be rebuilt. Thus, dependent objects (indexes, constraints, triggers, views, grants, etc.) will also have to be rebuilt, recompiled, or re-granted. The PATROL DB- Change Manager product takes care of all of these dependencies for you automatically. In addition, the analysis will produce a graphical impact tree which clearly identifies to impact of the changes to the database as well as identify any potential problems that might arise from those changes. So, in my opinion, the fastest way to convert from LONGS to LOBS is to use the PATROL DB-Change Manager product to logically specify your changes, analyze and generate a script, and execute the script.

-- Jeff Omo (jeff_omo@bmc.com), March 01, 2001.