Processing RTF Fields Between Notes® and RDBMS

Notes® is primarily a document management system, not a relational database management system (RDBMS). Because of this, Notes® performs special handling for attachments stored in rich text fields.

Notes® rich text fields are stored in a proprietary binary format. For example, Notes® rich text data written to Oracle fields will result in the Oracle fields containing data in that proprietary format. Non-Notes applications will be unable to process this data. Notes® rich text data is not the same as Rich Text Format data used for word processing documents.

In order to use BLOBs or RAWs, they must first originate in Notes®, be inserted into the Oracle table, and then be read back into Notes®. Otherwise, the BLOB or RAW data will not be in a format that Notes® can recognize. This is also true for IBM® Lotus Enterprise Integrator® (LEI) and Domino® Enterprise Connection Services (DECS) when a Notes® database is one of the connected databases.

For all non-Notes connectors, if you move data into a Notes® rich text field and then read it as type binary, that binary data will then be in Notes® rich text format.

Using a Notes® Database as the Source

Binary data transferred from a Notes® source will act as shown in the following tables.

Binary Data	Notes® Destination
as binary	will be stored in Notes® rich text format
as text	will be stored as Text

Binary Data	Non-Notes Destination
as binary	will be stored in Notes® rich text format
as text	will be stored as Text

Non-binary Data	Notes® Destination
as binary	will be stored in Notes® rich text format

Non-binary Data	Non-Notes Destination
as binary	will be stored in Notes® rich text format

Using a Non-Notes Database as the Source

Binary data transferred from a non-Notes source will act as shown in the following tables.

Binary Data	Notes® Destination
as binary	will be stored as Notes® rich text format (but source may or may not be Notes® rich text)
as text	will be stored as Text

Binary Data	Non-Notes Destination
as binary	will be stored as binary (in its original format)

Non-binary Data	Notes® Destination
as binary	will be stored in Notes® rich text format

Non-binary Data	Non-Notes Destination
as binary	will be stored as binary (in its original format)