Oracle Views with PL/SQL Calls alway return VARCHAR(2000), why ?

LS,

I ran into a little problem using views in oracle.

Imagine the following simplified scenario

CREATE OR REPLACE
FUNCTION Test RETURN CHAR AS
BEGIN
  RETURN 'ABC';
END;
/

CREATE OR REPLACE
VIEW TestView1 AS
SELECT (Test) TEST from dual;

CREATE OR REPLACE
VIEW TestView2 AS
SELECT ('ABC') TEST from dual;

In TestView1 the field TEST is represented as a VARCHAR2(2000) where in TestView2 the field TEST is a CHAR(3). Reporting tools like crystal reports or any
other tool using ODBC cannot handle more than VARCHAR2(256), i.e. we can not use
views that make any PL/SQL calls.

Does anyone know of a way to force oracle to return a CHAR type or a VARCHAR2(256)
or less in this scenario ?

Thanks

Mike. Received on Thu Nov 21 1996 - 00:00:00 CET