[Building Sakai] Converting LONG to LOB?

[Joshua Swink]

Will it be ok to change all LONG columns to LOB in our existing
database? Our DBA suggests that it would be advantageous if the fields
were LOB instead. Does this apply to LONG RAW as well?

The reason it would be advantageous is because we used to store all
resources in the DB, but since we moved them out the DB files have
huge gaps in them. We will migrate the data to a fresh schema in order
to shrink the DB and lose the empty space left by removing the
resources. This process is complicated by LONG values (I don't know
the details).

The announcement tool still creates tables with LONG, and possibly
other tools (see
announcement/announcement-impl/impl/src/sql/oracle/sakai_announcement.sql).

CREATE TABLE ANNOUNCEMENT_CHANNEL
(
    CHANNEL_ID VARCHAR2 (255) NOT NULL,
        NEXT_ID INT,
    XML LONG
);

Josh