Get TEXT value of a CLOB OID in Postgresql I have a database table that looks like:


create table answers(
   id int not null,
   question_id int not null,
   answer text null
)


This table was originally build by Hibernate using the @Lob attribute for the "answer" column.  I did not realize it at the time, but when setup that way, Hibernate stores an OID in the column instead of the actual text.  Everything works fine when I use Hibernate to retrieve the values since it automatically converts the OID to the CLOB string, however it is becoming a performance problem and I'd like to get rid of the OID.


select * from answers
ID     QUESTION_ID     ANSWER
===============================
1       123             55123
2       234             51614
3       345             56127
should be
ID     QUESTION_ID     ANSWER
===============================
1       123             Male
2       234             203-555-1212
3       345             555 Main St. New York, NY



My desire is to add an extra column to the table "ANSWER_VALUE TEXT" and do something like below to get the actual value into the table, then change Hibernate around to not use the @Lob designator


update answers set ANSWER_VALUE= getValueFromOID(ANSWER)


Does that "getValueFromOID" function exist?  If not, could I get some pointers on how to create one or at least how to fetch the actual value of an OID?

Thanks
Thanks goes to a_horse_with_no_name.  Solution is:

update answers set answer_value = lo_get(cast(value as bigint))


Note - the lo_get function appears to be present in Postgres 9.4 or higher.  For earlier versions, I don't see a way of doing this directly.  I'm currently running 9.0, but this just accelerated my upgrade plans.