Using pl/sql tables with Object types

[Seth]

I have a string that houses tag/value pairs as 10=TXCC|11=ABC|88=POP

An associative Table (formerly PL/SQL Table) would be perfect to store
the tag/values in once parsed since the string will parse out as a
sparce array.

The problem is that I use oracle objects (yeah I know sorry we did,
but have already gone too far down that path to convert to
procedures/packages) and would like to have the associative table as
one of its attributes. This will allow me to look up the tag rather
than have an attribute for each tag.

Any ideas on how to do this, seems Object Attributes can only be sql
data types and associative tables are only valid in pl/sql.

I cannot use varrays cause of the sparcity.