The Large Data Editor will be invoked whenever you need to view or edit long, long raw, CLOB, BLOB or BFILE column or variable values. It can additionally be used to edit varchar2 data. The Large Data Editor will analyze the data, and will attempt to display it in the correct format. It can display values as text, RTF, XML, HTML, Image (bmp, jpg, gif, tiff and others), and Hex data. Furthermore it can launch an external application (e.g. MS Word or Acrobat Reader) to view or edit the data.
Invoking the Large Data Editor for an image will result in the following screen:
The toolbar at the top of the editor includes the following buttons:
• Open – Opens the contents of a file into the editor.
• Save – Saves the contents of the editor to a file.
• Print – Prints the editor contents in the currently selected format.
• Cut – Place the editor contents on the clipboard in the currently selected format, and subsequently clear (null) the editor contents.
• Copy – Place the editor contents on the clipboard in the currently selected format.
• Paste – Paste the clipboard data into the editor in the currently selected format.
• Clear – Clear (null) the editor contents.
Below the toolbar you can select a tab page for the correct format of the editor contents. Multiple formats may be applicable for some data. For example, an HTML document can be viewed in HTML format or in Text format. All data can be viewed in Hex (binary) format.
When making changes to the editor contents in a specific format, you can immediately switch to a different format to view these changes. For example, when viewing an HTML document you can switch to Text format to make changes and return to HTML format to view these changes.
After pressing the OK button your changes will be propagated to the function from where the Large Data Editor was invoked.
19.1 Editing plain text
The text editor can be used to view or edit any kind of plain text data:
It can also be used to edit XML and HTML text. Switching to the XML or HTML tab page will immediately show the results of these changes.
19.2 Editing RTF
The RTF editor can be used to view and edit text in Rich Text Format. It allows you to easily change font type, size, color, style, and alignment:
19.3 Editing XML
When viewing XML content, the editor will initially switch to the XML tab page:
Here you can see the structure of the XML document in a tree view, and edit individual elements and attributes.
Pressing the Parse XML button will parse the XML document, and will report any errors. This requires that you have Net8 8.1 or later, and that the user has access to the SYS.XMLTYPE type or the XMLPARSER package.
You can press the Format XML button on the toolbar to apply standard formatting rules on the document.
If you switch to the plain text format tab page for an XML document, then the appropriate syntax highlighting will be applied.
19.4 Editing images
The image editor will display images in most popular formats, such as JPG, BMP, GIF, and so on. If the image is larger than the editor can display, the image will be resized to fit. This does not affect the contents, it is merely a visual effect. Below the image you will see the image format and the image size in pixels.
To change an image, you can either press the Open button on the toolbar to load it from a file, or copy the image from another source to the clipboard and press the Paste button. Note that the image format will change to BMP when copying/pasting via the clipboard! To ensure that the original format is preserved you should load it from a file.
19.5 Editing Hex data
To view or edit the editor contents in hexadecimal format you can switch to the Hex tab page:
On the left you see 8 columns with words (16 bits) of hexadecimal data. On the right you see the text representation of the hexadecimal data. You can edit both the hexadecimal and textual representation.
If you right-click on the hex editor you can select a different column layout.
19.6 Invoking an external viewer or editor
For many large objects that are stored in the database it may be necessary to invoke an external viewer or editor. For example, if a BLOB column contains the contents an Acrobat PDF file (Portable Document File), it will be necessary to invoke the Acrobat Reader. When invoking the Large Data Editor for such content, you will initially be taken to the Text or Hex tab page. After that, you can switch to the External tab page:
Here you can define which program should be executed. First you will need to define the file extension.
Before executing the external program, a temporary file with the editor contents will be saved with that extension. Next you will need to define which program should be executed. After that you can press the Execute button to view the content in the external program. If you change the file in the external program and save it, the Large Data Editor will notice this change and will allow you to import these changes back into the editor.
When viewing column data, the association between the table/column and the external program will be remembered for the next time you want to view it. If you additionally enable the Execute automatically next time option, then the Large Data Editor will immediately invoke the external program. To override this automatic behavior, hold down the Ctrl key when invoking the editor.
Most programs will have registered their file types, and instead of manually defining the extension and program you can simply select it from a list. First you will need to press the Show registered file types button. After that you can search for the correct file type and double-click on it. For a PDF file this would be the Adobe Acrobat File:
If you right-click on the file type list, you can sort it by extension or description (default).