Ok I have spent the last several hours reading and trying everything to get reading a blob from oracle to work.

Currently, I am getting the Connection Closed exception.

My current config is:

Hibernate 3.2.5
RDBMS: Oracle, version: Oracle9i Enterprise Edition Release 9.2.0.8.0
JDBC driver: Oracle JDBC driver, version: 11.1.0.6.0-Production+
dialect: org.hibernate.dialect.Oracle10gDialect

Now, I have used different combinations of between different drivers and dialects with no success. I am not using the the BlobUserType that is referenced in the docs/forums (should I?)

So what is the up to date way to get blobs to work with hibernate and oracle?

We are moving to 11g very soon. Will this problem be fixed in this release?

Any other suggestions?

From my expirience, it's better to use oracle OCI drivers. I am using "instance_client_10_2" oracle OCI drivers, and it works well with blobs, without nessesary to use BlobUserType.