As of Oracle Database 10g, LOB handling has been improved to ensure that triggers work properly and that performance remains high when LOBs are being loaded. To achieve these improvements, the Import utility automatically changes all LOBs that were empty at export time to be NULL after they are imported.
If you have applications that expect the LOBs to be empty rather than NULL, then after the import you can issue a SQL UPDATE statement for each LOB column. Depending on whether the LOB column type was a BLOB or a CLOB, the syntax would be one of the following:
UPDATE <tablename> SET <lob column> = EMPTY_BLOB() WHERE <lob column> = IS NULL; UPDATE <tablename> SET <lob column> = EMPTY_CLOB() WHERE <lob column> = IS NULL;
It is important to note that once the import is performed, there is no way to distinguish between LOB columns that are NULL versus those that are empty. Therefore, if that information is important to the integrity of your data, then be sure you know which LOB columns are NULL and which are empty before you perform the import.