Gary, Just an idea - you can have multiple pl/sql long datatypes and concatenate them together in the insert statement like this: CREATE TABLE tomtest(col1 LONG); DECLARE l_col1 LONG; l_col2 LONG; BEGIN INSERT INTO tomtest(col1) VALUES(l_col1 || l_col2); END; So you could load up the multiple local columns and perform the insert. Would this help? Tom Mercadante Oracle Certified Professional -----Original Message----- From: bonnergj@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:bonnergj@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] Sent: Monday, October 18, 2004 5:44 PM To: oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Getting a Clob into a Long I have a bit of a dilemma here. We have a production table that has a long datatype on it and for reasons I won't get into cannot be converted to a clob for several more months. I have a work table that has a clob on it as one of the columns. I need to copy the row from the clob table into the table with the long. This is all done in a stored procedure that gets called when needed. I go through a loop that parses the clob into varchar2 chunks and then concatenates them into a plsql long datatype. Problem is a plsql long datatype can only be 32k. Some of the clobs are longer and thus the problem. There are built-in functions to convert/load from a long to a clob but I haven't been able to find a way of going the other way. Longs on tables can hold 2gig but a plsql long can only handle 32k. Does anyone out there have any ideas how I could do this? I have tried every possible scenario I can think of with no success. Thanks for listening, Gary -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l