Oracle Concepts Question

I was reading the Concepts manual and was puzzled by this sentence. Can anyone elaborate on this:

<snip> Tables are the basic unit of data storage in an Oracle database. Database tables hold all user-accessible data. Each table has columns and rows. Oracle stores each row of a database table containing data for less than 256 columns as one or more row pieces.</snip>

What is this 256 column limit. I thought row chaining / migration depended on row size.

See http://download-west.oracle.com/docs/cd/B10501_01/server.920/a96524/c01_02intro.htm#20658

Thanks

rajXesh Received on Fri Feb 06 2004 - 21:42:54 CET