Update NCLOB column with a XML of more than 4000 characters in Oracle SQL

Question

I have a table with column name message which is of type NCLOB and ID which is of type varchar2

I want to update the message of a particlular ID. I am using the following query

update table_name set message='<<long XML Message>>' where ID=value

I am getting the following error :

Error at Command Line:6 Column:38
Error report:
SQL Error: ORA-01704: string literal too long
01704. 00000 -  "string literal too long"
*Cause:    The string literal is longer than 4000 characters.
*Action:   Use a string literal of at most 4000 characters.
       Longer values may only be entered using bind variables.

I tried storing the xml into a variable and updating the column to this variable, but of no use

Answer 1

Oracle has a limit on the length of literal strings, you are hitting that limit. You can break it up into 4000 character chunks. This might do it for you. I can't test it at the moment.

update table_name set message= '<4K>' || '<4K>' || '<4K>' where ID=value

It looks like the above will not work.

So lets try this, with 1K blocks:

update table_name set message= '<1st 1K>' where ID=value;
update table_name set message= message || '<2nd 1K>' where ID=value;
update table_name set message= message || '<3rd 1K>' where ID=value;
update table_name set message= message || '<4th 1K>' where ID=value;

I was able to add a message length of 80K. I just stopped after that, no errors.