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Chapter 14 CHAPTER 14
Oracle Extended Datatypes 14
The Oracle database has a rich set of native datatypes, but you may sometimes need
to go beyond their capabilities, depending on the specifics of your development and
deployment requirements. You can use traditional datatypes, such as those described
in Chapter 4, to represent a portion of the information that your organization needs
to store and manage. Introduction of the XML datatype (described in Chapter 4) and
support for features such as XMLSchema, an XML DB repository (enabling URLbased
access to XML documents stored in Oracle), and SQL/XML (for generating
XML documents from SQL) have extended Oracle??™s ability to function as a ???XML
database.??? Oracle also provides datatypes that are specifically designed to provide
optimal storage, performance, and flexibility for other specific types of data, the
focus of this chapter.
Real-world information used in business, such as purchase orders, claims forms,
shipping forms, and so on, may sometimes be best represented as object types,
which are more complex than the simple atomic datatypes discussed in Chapter 4.
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