Whats a VARCHAR?
Here’s a short description of VARCHARs: VARCHAR2 A kind of column in the database that contains variable-length character data. This is what Oracle calls an “internal datatype”, because it’s a possible column type. See “VARCHAR2”. VARCHAR An Oracle “external datatype” (datatype code 9). You use this only if you’re doing dynamic SQL Method 4, or datatype equivalencing. See “VARCHAR” for datatype equivalencing, Chapter 14, “ANSI Dynamic SQL”, and Chapter 15, “Oracle Dynamic SQL: Method 4”. VARCHAR[n] varchar[n] This is a Pro*C/C++ “pseudotype” that you can declare as a host variable in your Pro*C/C++ program. It’s actually generated by Pro*C/C++ as a struct, with a 2-byte length element, and a [n]-byte character array. See “Declaring VARCHAR Variables”.