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

I would prefer store IP addresses just in string, in format, returned by SYS_CONTEXT ('USERENV', 'IP_ADDRESS')

In refference of SYS_CONTEXT in 11g are described only default return value length as 256 bytes and does not described return value size for exacly 'IP_ADDRESS' context.

In document Oracle Database and IPv6 Statement of Direction described:

Oracle Database 11g Release 2 supports the standard IPv6 address notations specified by RFC2732. A 128bit IP address is generally represented as 8 groups of 4 hex digits, with the “:” symbol as the group separator. The leading zeros in each group are removed. For example, 1080:0:0:0:8:800:200C:417A would be a valid IPv6 address. One or more consecutive zero fields can optionally be compressed with the “::” separator. For example, 1080::8:800:200C:417A.

From this notes I prefer to make column IP_ADDRESS varchar2(39) to allow store 8 group by 4 digits and 7 separators between this groups.