Temporary LOB caching

[Dronablo]

Dear Anthony,

There is a problem in the folowing function (dpiLob.c:1427):

int dpiOci__lobCreateTemporary(dpiLob *lob, dpiError *error)
{
    uint8_t lobType;
    int status;

    DPI_OCI_LOAD_SYMBOL("OCILobCreateTemporary",
            dpiOciSymbols.fnLobCreateTemporary)
    if (lob->type->oracleTypeNum == DPI_ORACLE_TYPE_BLOB)
        lobType = DPI_OCI_TEMP_BLOB;
    else lobType = DPI_OCI_TEMP_CLOB;
    status = (*dpiOciSymbols.fnLobCreateTemporary)(lob->conn->handle,
            error->handle, lob->locator, DPI_OCI_DEFAULT,
            lob->type->charsetForm, lobType, 0, DPI_OCI_DURATION_SESSION);
    return dpiError__check(error, status, lob->conn, "create temporary LOB");
}

It creates temporary lob with cache=false, which leads to unnecessary physical io every time such a variable is created.

For example, if we try to pass empty string from python code to plsql procedure with CLOB in parameter using cx_Oracle and ODPI, it would generate physical IO (could be easily seen in 10046 trace).

I believe it should be changed to chache=true, or, which is probably better, make this parameter configurable.

Regards,
Andrey

[anthony-tuininga]

You make an excellent point. Thanks. I have changed cache=True in this function as suggested. Only very large temporary LOBs (multiple GB) would benefit from cache=False and these are unlikely to be used. The parameter could be added to make it configurable with the documentation indicating that the value True should be used in almost all cases -- but that seems an unnecessary complication so I'll leave it the way it is for now.