Oracle SQL: the Essential Reference

1.4. Datatypes

Oracle stores data in the database in any of three basic families of datatypes: character, numeric, and date. Both the character and numeric families have several distinct datatypes associated with them, which are described in the following sections.

1.4.1. Character Data

Character data is any string of one or more bytes of data that will not be the direct target of an arithmetic operation. Oracle (and SQL) supports several types of character data, which are listed below with their usage syntax:

CHAR [(length)]

Fixed-length character data, with a maximum length of 2000 bytes. length specifies the maximum length of the character string to be stored.

VARCHAR2 [(length)]

Variable-length character data, with a maximum length of 4000 bytes. length specifies the maximum length of the character string to be stored.

NCHAR [(length)]

Fixed-length character data consisting of characters from a National Character Language (NLS) supported character set. Since a character may require more than one byte, the maximum length is 2000 bytes (which may allow fewer than 2000 characters). length specifies the maximum length of the character string to be stored.

NVARCHAR2 [(length)]

Variable-length character data consisting of characters from a National Language Support (NLS) character set. Since a character may require more than one byte, the maximum length is 4000 bytes (which may allow fewer than 4000 characters).length specifies the maximum length of the character string to be ...