Syntax

Purpose

BFILENAME returns a BFILE locator that is associated with a physical LOB binary file on the server file system.

• 'directory' is a database object that serves as an alias for a full path name on the server file system where the files are actually located.

• 'filename' is the name of the file in the server file system.

You must create the directory object and associate a BFILE value with a physical file before you can use them as arguments to BFILENAME in a SQL or PL/SQL statement, DBMS_LOB package, or OCI operation.

You can use this function in two ways:

• In a DML statement to initialize a BFILE column

• In a programmatic interface to access BFILE data by assigning a value to the BFILE locator

The directory argument is case sensitive. You must ensure that you specify the directory object name exactly as it exists in the data dictionary. For example, if an "Admin" directory object was created using mixed case and a quoted identifier in the CREATE DIRECTORY statement, then when using the BFILENAME function you must refer to the directory object as 'Admin'. You must specify the filename argument according to the case and punctuation conventions for your operating system.

Examples

The following example inserts a row into the sample table pm.print_media. The example uses the BFILENAME function to identify a binary file on the server file system in the directory /demo/schema/product_media. The example shows how the directory database object media_dir was created in the pm schema.

CREATE DIRECTORY media_dir AS '/demo/schema/product_media';

INSERT INTO print_media (product_id, ad_id, ad_graphic)
  VALUES (3000, 31001, BFILENAME('MEDIA_DIR', 'modem_comp_ad.gif'));