Table of Contents
Character Set
Storage and Size
When to Use Which
Home Database Oracle What is the difference between VARCHAR2 and NVARCHAR2 in Oracle?

What is the difference between VARCHAR2 and NVARCHAR2 in Oracle?

Sep 24, 2025 am 05:21 AM
oracle varchar2

VARCHAR2 uses the database character set for single-language text, up to 4000 bytes; NVARCHAR2 uses Unicode (AL16UTF16) for multilingual support, storing up to 4000 characters with up to 8000 bytes, ideal for global applications.

What is the difference between VARCHAR2 and NVARCHAR2 in Oracle?

In Oracle, VARCHAR2 and NVARCHAR2 are both character data types used to store variable-length strings, but they differ in how they handle character encoding and storage.

Character Set

VARCHAR2 uses the database's default character set, which is usually a single-byte or multi-byte encoding like WE8ISO8859P1 or AL32UTF8. This means it's best suited for storing text in a specific language or region.

NVARCHAR2, on the other hand, uses the national character set (typically AL16UTF16), which is designed to support Unicode. This makes it ideal for storing multilingual text, such as data that includes characters from multiple languages like Chinese, Arabic, and French.

Storage and Size

VARCHAR2 size is defined in bytes by default (can be in characters if specified), and the maximum size is 4000 bytes.

NVARCHAR2 always uses character semantics and has a maximum size of 4000 characters. Because it uses Unicode (often UTF-16), each character may take 2 or more bytes, so the actual byte storage can be up to 8000 bytes.

When to Use Which

  • Use VARCHAR2 for regular text in a known language that fits within the database character set.
  • Use NVARCHAR2 when you need to store Unicode text that may include characters outside the standard character set, especially in global or multilingual applications.

Basically, the key difference is character set support: VARCHAR2 for local character sets, NVARCHAR2 for Unicode. Choose based on your application's language needs.

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