LOBs Help Control Semantics

With respect to SQL, data residing in Oracle8i LOBs is opaque and not query-able. You can write functions (including methods of object types) to access and manipulate parts of LOBs. In this way the structure and semantics of data residing in large objects can be supplied by application developers.

For example, you may want to store the resumes of Employees as character LOBs. In such a case, you can write a routine that interprets the resume, say that pulls out the names of the companies where the Employee has worked before, using your application-specific knowledge of the structure of resumes. You can also use an interMedia Text (Context) index to index keywords in the resume.