title: Oracle CLOB vs BLOB
body: <p>I want to know what does Oracle's CLOB has to offer over BLOB data type.
  <a href="https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E18283_01/server.112/e17110/limits001.htm" rel="noreferrer">Both</a> have data storage limits of (4 GB - 1) * DB_BLOCK_SIZE.</p>
  
  <p>A text string which is longer than 4000 bytes can not fit in VARCHAR2 column. Now, I can use CLOB and BLOB as well to store this string. </p>
  
  <p>Everyone says, <em>CLOB is good and meant for character data</em> and BLOB is for binary data such as images, unstructured documents.</p>
  
  <p>But I see I can store character data inside a BLOB as well. </p>
  
  <p><strong>What I want to know:</strong></p>
  
  <p>So, question is on the basics, why CLOB and why not BLOB always? Is there anything to do with encoding?</p>
  
  <p>May be the question title should be, <strong>How CLOB handles the character data differently than a BLOB?</strong></p>