R: How to use RJDBC to download blob data from oracle database? - r

Question

Does anyone know of a way to download blob data from an Oracle database using RJDBC package?
When I do something like this:
library(RJDBC)
drv <- JDBC(driverClass=..., classPath=...)
conn <- dbConnect(drv, ...)
blobdata <- dbGetQuery(conn, "select blobfield from blobtable where id=1")
I get this message:
Error in .jcall(rp, "I", "fetch", stride) :
java.sql.SQLException: Ongeldig kolomtype.: getString not implemented for class oracle.jdbc.driver.T4CBlobAccessor
Well, the message is clear, but still I hope there is a way to download blobs. I read something about 'getBinary()' as a way of getting blob information. Can I find a solution in that direction?

Answer 1

The problem is that RJDBC tries to convert the SQL data type it reads to either double or String in Java. Typically the trick works because JDBC driver for Oracle has routines to convert different data types to String (accessed by getString() method of java.sql.ResultSet class). For BLOB, though, the getString() method has been discontinued from some moment. RJDBC still tries calling it, which results in an error.
I tried digging into the guts of RJDBC to see if I can get it to call proper function for BLOB columns, and apparently the solution requires modification of fetch S4 method in this package and also the result-grabbing Java class within the package. I'll try to get this patch to package maintainers. Meanwhile, quick and dirty fix using rJava (assuming conn and q as in your example):
s <- .jcall(conn#jc, "Ljava/sql/Statement;", "createStatement")
r <- .jcall(s, "Ljava/sql/ResultSet;", "executeQuery", q, check=FALSE)
listraws <- list()
col_num <- 1L
i <- 1
while(.jcall(r, 'Z', 'next')){
listraws[[i]] <- .jcall(r, '[B', 'getBytes', col_num)
i <- i + 1
}
This retrieves list of raw vectors in R. The next steps depend on the nature of data - in my application these vectors represent PNG images and can be handled pretty much as file connections by png package.
Done using R 3.1.3, RJDBC 0.2-5, Oracle 11-2 and OJDBC driver for JDK >= 1.6