Inserting text into CLOB with Perl to Oracle

Hello,

I am attempting to insert a string of user entered data from an html form to an Oracle clob field. Afterwards, I would like to retrieve it and present it to the user.

I have a few questions.

1) When I insert the data into the clob, all that shows up in the sqlplus interface is the first line. Is this normal?

2) How do I insert the user entered data into the clob field? Do I simply insert it in or do I have to perform some conversion, separate query, etc?

3) When I attempt to retrieve the data, if the length of the string is over 73 characters, the selection query refuses to work. Why is this? Do I need to cast the return from the query somehow? Is there some procedure to convert the clob back to a string in Perl, does it require a separate query?

If someone could point me in the direction to some syntax examples, that would help a lot.

Thanks and sorry for the Perl post in the PHP forum. I'm a little desparate here.

Sincerely,

Christopher Jon Jursa
Geoinformatics Laboratory Administrator
School of Information Sciences
University of Pittsburgh
135 North Bellefield Ave.
Pittsburgh, PA 15260