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Re: limit of varchar2

From: Jim Kennedy <kennedy-family_at_home.com>
Date: Thu, 17 May 2001 06:45:20 GMT
Message-ID: <4sKM6.17721$p33.324745@news1.sttls1.wa.home.com>

You can only fit 4000 bytes in a varchar2 column. You may have multiple varchar2 columns each with 4000 bytes. That said, if you have a database block size of 8K and you have 4 varchar2 fields and each has 4000 bytes of data then you will cause chaining (since it can't all fit in on database block). Your application won't have to do anything special to get the data; it just means the server works harder doing multiple IO's for that row. If you need a very large character column then I would use a CLOB. It can store the data out of line so you don't get chaining. It depends upon your needs.

Jim

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"Zeyad S" <sweidanz_at_yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:3B0370B6.36993F3C_at_yahoo.com...

> Folks,
> In Oracle documentation, specifically Application Developer's Guide,
> they mention the following:
>
> Varchar2(size) Variable for each row, up to 4000 bytes per row. consider
> the character ser(one-byte or multibyte) before setting size.
>
> My question is: is the 4000 bytes is really the maximum bytes per row or
> there is something misleading here? I tried it and create a table with
> more than two fields one with varchar2(4000) and the other with
> varchar2(200) without any problem. Also i inserted two records and
> retieved them without any problem.
>
> Am I missunderstanding something here? and when should i consider using
> CLOB datatypes?
>
> Thanks,
> Zeyad
>
>
>
Received on Thu May 17 2001 - 01:45:20 CDT

Original text of this message

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