SQL Reference

DUMP

DUMP in SQL is a function that is used to get a detailed representational output about the data type code, the length in bytes and the internal representation of an expression. It returns a VARCHAR2 value containing the datatype code, the length in bytes, and the internal representation of the expression.

Example

SELECT DUMP(name, 1016) "Name" FROM Employees WHERE ID = 1;

Output

Name
------------------------------------------
Typ=1 Len=6: c,61,74,68,79,6e

Explanation

The DUMP function returns a varchar2 value that includes the datatype code, length in bytes, and internal representation of the expression. In this case, an hex-dump (1016) of the name of an employee with ID 1 is obtained.