Compression tools

[amir_magdy]

Is there any way to compress data stored in tables ?
I'm using LONG fields to store pdf files, I need some way to store the data compressed, this will decrease the required size a lot.
Also if possible, I need this compression to be transperant to the application, like if there is a stored procedure that can compress while inserting, and uncompress while reading.
Thanks

[tamilselvan]

I do not think it will be possible in Oracle.

[pwoneill]

Not unless someone wrote some zip/unzip procedures in PL/SQL, even then I'm not sure how it could be done to be so transparent. It would also cause hefty performance hits in the application.

Edit:

Actually, as an added thought, it might be easier (although still a performance hit) if the compression procedures were Java based. I don't have a ton of Java experience, or 100% sure of how tightly integrated Java is with Oracle 8i, but here are a few links you could use to get started.

[url]http://codeguru.earthweb.com/java/tij/tij0115.shtml[/url]
[url]http://www.stud.uni-hannover.de/~stef/java/LZW.html[/url]
[url]http://www.ibiblio.org/javafaq/books/javaio/urls.html#9[/url]

It would require a bit more development effort, but if you really needed them compressed that's probablly the only option (that I can think of anyway, but then again I'm no expert :) )

What I'm envisioning is something like

select java_unzip(long_column) from table;
insert into table values (java_zip(log_column));

I don't have a lot of development experience with long/blobs either but it might work.

[Edited by pwoneill on 11-22-2000 at 03:58 PM]