Representing IPv4/IPv6 addresses in Oracle

Question

In Oracle, what is the appropriate data type or technique for representing network addresses, which addresses may be IPv4 or IPv6?

Background: I\'m converting a tab

Answer 1

The possibilities are:

• Store as string, i.e. VARCHAR2 (example 1080::8:800:200c:417a)
• Store as numeric value
  • NUMBER data type
  • INTEGER data type
• Store as RAW value
  • One RAW value, i.e. RAW(4) or RAW(16) for IPv4 or IPv6 respectively
  • 4 x RAW(1) or 8 x RAW(2) for IPv4 or IPv6 respectively

I would recommend to use RAW values because

• If you use strings then you have to consider different formats of IPv6.

  1080::8:800:200C:417A
  1080::8:800:200c:417a
  1080::8:800:32.12.65.122
  1080:0:0:0:8:800:200C:417A
  1080:0:0:0:0008:0800:200C:417A
  1080:0000:0000:0000:0008:0800:200C:417A
  

  are all legal representations of the same IPv6 IP-Address. Your application needs to enforce a common format for proper usage, e.g. use in WHERE condition.

• NUMBER/INTEGER values are senseless without conversion to human-readable format. You cannot use INTEGER data type in PL/SQL

  i INTEGER := 2**128-1; -- i.e. ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff
  
  -> ORA-06502: PL/SQL: numeric or value error: number precision too large. 
  

• In case you have to work with subnetting you cannot use function BITAND - it also supports numbers only up to 2^127

• You can use UTL_RAW functions UTL_RAW.BIT_AND, UTL_RAW.BIT_COMPLEMENT, UTL_RAW.BIT_OR for subnet operations.

• In case you have to deal with really big amount of data (I am talking about billions of rows) it might be beneficial to split the IP-Address into several RAW values, i.e. 4 x RAW(1) or 8 x RAW(2). Such columns would be predestinated for Bitmap-Indexes and you would save a lot of disc space and gain performance.