>The benefit of CLOB is you can do a "string search" using SQL's LIKE operator in addition to exact matches. You can not do that on a LONG data type. You can not create an index on either data type. The other factor is you can not use the Microsoft ODBC for Oracle as it has not been updated to handle the newer Oracle data types. You will have to use Oracle's ODBC driver or a 3rd party driver. You can not use NVL, but you can SUBSTR(). Go figure.

Hi Mark,

So I'll at least be able to use some string functions. This is good!

Can I cheat and use NVL(TO_CHAR(SomeClobFld), ???)

I assume I can just convert the fields in the database without any fears?

As for the Microsoft ODBC. I've no quams about using the Oracle driver.

Mike