Format and Character Set Columns

If your documents consist of mixed formats or mixed character sets, create the following additional columns:

• A format column to record the format (TEXT or BINARY) to help filtering during indexing. You can also use the format column to ignore rows for indexing by setting the format column to IGNORE. IGNORE is useful for bypassing rows containing data that is incompatible with Oracle Text indexing, such as images.

• A character set column to record the document character set for each row.

When you create your index, specify the name of the format or character set column in the parameter clause of the CREATE INDEX statement.

For all rows containing the AUTO or AUTOMATIC keywords in character set or language columns, Oracle Text applies statistical techniques to determine the character set and language of the documents and modify document indexing appropriately.