In This Chapter

The information in this chapter applies only if your database server is IBM Informix Dynamic Server.

This chapter describes how to store, create, and access a smart large object; how to transfer smart-large-object data; how to retrieve the status of a smart large object; and how to read or write a smart large object to or from a file.

A smart large object is a recoverable large object that is stored in an sbspace on disk. You can access a smart large object with read, write, and seek operations similar to an operating-system file. The two data types for smart large objects are character large object (CLOB) and binary large object (BLOB). A CLOB consists of text data and a BLOB consists of binary data in an undifferentiated byte stream.

For more information about smart-large-object data types, see Data Types, and the IBM Informix: Guide to SQL Reference. For information about the client functions that you use to access smart large objects, see Client Functions.