What is Oracle NVARCHAR?
Matthew Perez
Updated on March 18, 2026
What is Oracle NVARCHAR?
In Oracle, the NVARCHAR data type exists to allow applications to store data using a Unicode character set when the database character set does not support Unicode. One thing to be aware of in migrating, however, is character length semantics.
What is NVARCHAR example?
The syntax for declaring the nvarchar variable is nvarchar(n), where n defines the string size in byte-pairs. The value of n must be from 1 through 4000. For Example, when we store a string of length 10, The string will occupy (10*2) + 2 (=22 bytes) bytes of storage.
What is NVARCHAR used for?
About the NVARCHAR data type: It is a variable-length data type. Used to store Unicode characters.
What is the difference between VARCHAR2 and NVARCHAR?
VARCHAR2 vs. NVARCHAR2. First, the maximum size of VARCHAR2 can be in either bytes or characters, whereas the maximum size of NVARCHAR2 is only in characters. In addition, the maximum byte length of an NVARCHAR2 depends on the configured national character set.
What is the difference between CLOB and Nclob?
The primary difference between these types is that the CLOB type uses 1 byte per character to store characters in the ASCII character set while the NCLOB type uses 2 or 3 bytes per character to store characters in the Unicode character set. The BLOB (Binary Large Object) type can store data in binary format.
What is the difference between Nvarchar and varchar in Oracle?
Varchar is a short name for Variable Character Field. The characters represent data that are of indeterminate length. Nvarchar, on the other hand, is a column that can store any length of Unicode data.
How is nvarchar stored?
The key difference between varchar and nvarchar is the way they are stored, varchar is stored as regular 8-bit data(1 byte per character) and nvarchar stores data at 2 bytes per character. Due to this reason, nvarchar can hold upto 4000 characters and it takes double the space as SQL varchar.
What is the difference between nchar and char?
n-char : A n-char is also a string of words that can store unicode data. nchar stands for national character. It takes up two bytes to store the data and can store upto 4000 chars. Unicode data refers to a universal coding standard for letters and other data.
What characters does NVARCHAR allow?
What is difference between Nchar and NVARCHAR?
The NCHAR data type is a fixed-length character data type that supports localized collation. The NVARCHAR data type is a varying-length character data type that can store up to 255 bytes of text data and supports localized collation.
Why are using NVARCHAR2 in Oracle?
The NVARCHAR2 datatype is a Unicode-only datatype. When you create a table with an NVARCHAR2 column, you supply the maximum number of characters it can hold. Oracle subsequently stores each value in the column exactly as you specify it, provided the value does not exceed the maximum length of the column.
What is BLOB datatype in Oracle?
A BLOB (binary large object) is a varying-length binary string that can be up to 2,147,483,647 characters long. Like other binary types, BLOB strings are not associated with a code page. In addition, BLOB strings do not hold character data.
What is the difference between varchar and VARCHAR2 in Oracle?
VARCHAR is ANSI standard but takes up space whereas VARCHAR2 is Oracle-only but makes more efficient use of space. VARCHAR2 does not distinguish between a NULL and empty string, and never will.
What is VARCHAR2 in Oracle?
VARCHAR2 is a data type used to store variable-length character data. A varchar2 value can contain up to 4000 bytes of data (limit in Oracle 7 was 2000 bytes).