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VARCHAR2 versus VARCHAR

EXPERT RESPONSE FROM: Brian Peasland

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QUESTION POSED ON: 23 December 2002
Why does Oracle recommend using VARCHAR2 instead of VARCHAR datatypes?

EXPERT RESPONSE

Oracle recommends this because VARCHAR2 is supported and VARCHAR is not supported. I have heard for many, many years, and many, many versions of Oracle that VARCHAR is reserved for future use. But I have yet to see any indication as to what this future use is. Yet, other RDBMS manufacturers use VARCHAR the same as Oracle uses VARCHAR2.

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