Inserting BLOB Values With SQL INSERT Statements

The simplest way to insert a binary string into a BLOB column is to use a SQL INSERT statement and include the binary string a SQL binary literal in the statement as shown in this sample program. Note that SQL binary literal format is '<hex_numbers>'.

/* OracleBlobInsert.java
 - Copyright (c) 2015, HerongYang.com, All Rights Reserved.
 */
import java.sql.*;
public class OracleBlobInsert {
  public static void main(String [] args) {
    Connection con = null;
    try {
      oracle.jdbc.pool.OracleDataSource ds 
        = new oracle.jdbc.pool.OracleDataSource();
      ds.setDriverType("thin");
      ds.setServerName("localhost");
      ds.setPortNumber(1521);
      ds.setDatabaseName("XE");
      ds.setUser("Herong");
      ds.setPassword("TopSecret");
      con = ds.getConnection();

// Deleting the record for re-testing
      String subject = "Test on INSERT statement";
      Statement sta = con.createStatement(); 
      sta.executeUpdate("DELETE FROM Image WHERE Subject = '"
        +subject+"'");

// Inserting CLOB value with a regular insert statement
      sta = con.createStatement(); 
      int count = sta.executeUpdate(
        "INSERT INTO Image"
        +" (ID, Subject, Body)"
        +" VALUES (1, '"+subject+"'"
        +", 'C9CBBBCCCEB9C8CABCCCCEB9C9CBBB')"); //Oracle format
//      +", 0xC9CBBBCCCEB9C8CABCCCCEB9C9CBBB)"); //SQL Server format
//      +", x'C9CBBBCCCEB9C8CABCCCCEB9C9CBBB')"); // MySQL format

// Retrieving BLOB value with getBytes()
      ResultSet res = sta.executeQuery(
        "SELECT * FROM Image WHERE Subject = '"+subject+"'");
      res.next();
      System.out.println("The inserted record: "); 
      System.out.println("   Subject = "+res.getString("Subject"));
      System.out.println("   Body = "
        +new String(res.getBytes("Body"))); 
      res.close();
      sta.close();

      con.close();
    } catch (Exception e) {
      e.printStackTrace();
    }
  }
}

The compilation and execution of this program are shown below. The output confirms that the character string value was correctly inserted into the BLOB column:

C:\herong>\Progra~1\java\jdk1.8.0_45\bin\java 
   -cp .;\local\lib\ojdbc6.jar OracleBlobInsert

The inserted record:
   Subject = Test on INSERT statement
   Body = ╔╦╗╠╬╣╚╩╝╠╬╣╔╦╗

Using SQL binary literals to insert BLOB values into a database is simple, but it requires you to convert your binary data into the SQL binary literal format: '<hex_numbers>', which could be a problem if you have a very long binary data to enter.

Notice that the binary literal format on Oracle is different than MySQL. This is another reason that you should avoid using binary literals in SQL statements to make your Java program portable.

Using PreparedStatement with setXXX() method is a much better choice.