Originally posted by Avi Abrami:
Rog,
Have you read the Oracle documentation?
VARCHAR2 columns can be defined as "bytes" (the default) or "characters".
The documentation also details the size calculations Oracle makes for storing VARCHAR2 column data.
Good Luck,
Avi.
That is true... you can override the default length semantics defined by the NLS_LENGTH_SEMANTICS parameter which defaults to byte(i.e., if you don't specify VARCHAR2(4000) is 4000 bytes).
You can set it to VARCHAR2(CHAR 4000) and Oracle will store the 4000 characters regardless of the number of bytes used to store the 4000 characters.
Your maximum size limit for VARCHAR2 is 4000 regardless of character or bytes.
[ October 15, 2008: Message edited by: Paul Campbell ]