Character Large Object

What Does Character Large Object Mean?

A character large object (CLOB) is a large block of text
stored in a database in some form of text encoding. Oracle and IBM DB2 database
provide explicit support for CLOBs, though other databases can manipulate large
amounts of text in some way. CLOBs can be very large, up to two gigabytes or
larger.

Techopedia Explains Character Large Object

A character large object, also known as a CLOB, is similar
to a binary large object (BLOB) in that they are both large amounts of data.
The key difference is that a CLOB is stored using a text encoding method such
as ASCII or Unicode. CLOBs are supported in Oracle and IBM DB2, though some
databases cannot use certain commands such as “LIKE” on CLOBs. Other databases
support text, memo or long character fields. CLOBs can encompass long documents
such as books. They can range up to two gigabytes in size or even more. Some
databases store CLOBs by referencing out-of-table data.

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Margaret Rouse

Technology Specialist

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.

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