Why does TOYS show VARCHAR2 data types as VARCHAR2 (20 BYTE) when I defined it simply as VARCHAR2 (20)?
TOYS is Oracle 9i savy. That is, Oracle 9i supports a concept of defining character data types with a length explicitly specified in bytes or characters. In versions of Oracle prior 9i, the length of character data types was implied as being in characters if the character set was fixed width encoding otherwise it was implied as being in bytes. Out of the box TOYS assumes character lengths should be specified in characters (as does the SQL92 standard). Consequently, it displays character data types with a length specified in characters without the CHAR qualifier. Character data types with a length specified in bytes are displayed with the BYTE qualifier. In contrast, SQL*Plus displays the CHAR/BYTE qualifier for CHAR and VARCHAR2 columns when the length semantics are different to those defined for the session. That is, the session’s setting for NLS_LENGTH_SEMANTICS. Since, TOYS is likely to be dealing with multiple databases and most likely many different settings it was thought less co
As of Oracle 9i, the Oracle server supports defining character data types with a length explicitly specified in bytes or characters. In versions of Oracle prior 9i, the length of character data types was implied as being in characters if the character set was fixed width encoding otherwise it was implied as being in bytes. By default, TOYS assumes character lengths should be specified in characters (as does the SQL92 standard). Consequently, it displays character data types with a length specified in characters without the CHAR qualifier. Character data types with a length specified in bytes are displayed with the BYTE qualifier. In contrast, SQL*Plus displays the CHAR/BYTE qualifier for CHAR and VARCHAR2 columns when the length semantics are different to those defined for the session. That is, the session’s setting for NLS_LENGTH_SEMANTICS. Since, TOYS is likely to be dealing with multiple databases and most likely many different settings it was thought less confusing to use a more st
