The large object (LOB) datatype allows us to hold and manipulate unstructured and semistructured data such as documents, graphic images, video clips, sound files, and XML files. The DBMS_LOB
package was designed to manipulate LOB datatypes. Starting in Oracle Database 12c, LOBs can store large amounts of data with a maximum size of 128 TB depending on the database block size; a single table can have one or more columns of LOB datatypes, such as binary large object (BLOB), character large object (CLOB), national character large object (NCLOB), and BFILE. This article describes some of the problems that can happen when you have LOB segments in your environment and how to mitigate these problems.