Oracle datatypes - what to use?

We are building a datawarehouse with Oracle 7.3, thus all fields will be read only.

Could someone recommend what datatypes for:

Character data:

Should we use VARCHAR2 for all character type data? Even for the 1 or 2 byte fields.
That is what some people have advised. Does putting a maximun length on the VARCHAR2
buy you anything?

Numeric data:

Can we use plain NUMERIC as the data type for all numberic fields. Does designating precision and the number of decimals buy you anything?

Thank you Received on Tue Jul 16 1996 - 00:00:00 CEST