Smart-large-object data types

A smart large object data type stores text or binary data in sbspaces.

The database server can provide random access to a smart large object value. That is, it can access any portion of the smart large object value. These data types are recoverable. The following list summarizes the smart large object data types that HCL OneDB™ supports.

BLOB: Stores binary data of up to 4 terabytes (4*2⁴⁰ bytes)
CLOB: Stores text data of up to 4 terabytes (4*2⁴⁰ bytes)

A smart large object is stored in a single sbspace. The SBSPACENAME configuration parameter specifies the system default sbspace in which smart large objects are created, unless you specify another storage area. For information about how the CREATE TABLE statement can specify nondefault storage locations and nondefault storage characteristics for BLOB or CLOB columns, see the description of the PUT Clause.

Both of these are built-in opaque data types. Like most opaque types, they cannot be accessed in a database of a non-local database server by a distributed query or by other DML operations, nor can they be returned from a database of another database server by a UDR. For information on accessing BLOB or CLOB values in other databases of the local server, however, see BOOLEAN and other built-in opaque data types.

Smart large object data types are not parallelizable. The PDQ feature of Dynamic Serve has no effect on operations that load or unload BLOB or CLOB values, or that process them in queries or in other DML operations.

For more information about the smart large object data types, see the HCL OneDB Guide to SQL: Reference.

For information about how to create sbspaces, see your HCL OneDB Administrator's Guide.

For information about optical families, see the .

For information about the built-in functions that you can use to import, export, and copy smart large objects, see Smart-Large-Object Functions and the HCL OneDB Guide to SQL: Tutorial.