Moving LONGS Around

The question "How do I move a LONG column from one table to another" comes up from time to time. The following shows how to use SQLPlus to copy longs from table to table or database to database. Note that this does not work for long raws. There simply are no good solutions for long raws without coding C.

The sql*plus copy command will do it for longs. You need a sql*net connect string that loops back to your local database (not a dblink, a sqlplus connect string, you need to be able to "sqlplus scott/tiger@yourdatabase"...

For example, I just:

create table foo
( The_Whole_View   varchar2(65),
TextLength       number,
TheText          Long )
/

which is a table, sort of like all_views (which has a long)... Then I:

SQL> copy from tkyte/tkyte@aria insert foo (the_whole_view, textlength, thetext ) using select owner||'.'||view_name, text_length, text from all_views;

So the sqlplus command transformed the table for me (the columns are not the
same). Also, I could have used a where clause to pick off just some rows.

You'll want to set

set arraysize N -- amount of rows the copy command will copy with each fetch
set long N -- size of your longest long
set copycommit M -- number of fetches to do before commit (N*M rows!!)

in plus before doing this. see the manual for all the options....
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