Difference between VARCHAR2(10 CHAR) and NVARCHAR2(10)

Question

I've installed Oracle Database 10g Express Edition (Universal) with the default settings:

SELECT * FROM NLS_DATABASE_PARAMETERS;

NLS_CHARACTERSET               AL32UTF8                                 
NLS_NCHAR_CHARACTERSET         AL16UTF16                                

Given that both CHAR and NCHAR data types seem to accept multi-byte strings, what is the exact difference between these two column definitions?

VARCHAR2(10 CHAR)
NVARCHAR2(10)

Answer 1

The NVARCHAR2 datatype was introduced by Oracle for databases that want to use Unicode for some columns while keeping another character set for the rest of the database (which uses VARCHAR2). The NVARCHAR2 is a Unicode-only datatype.

One reason you may want to use NVARCHAR2 might be that your DB uses a non-Unicode character set and you still want to be able to store Unicode data for some columns without changing the primary character set. Another reason might be that you want to use two Unicode character set (AL32UTF8 for data that comes mostly from western Europe, AL16UTF16 for data that comes mostly from Asia for example) because different character sets won't store the same data equally efficiently.

Both columns in your example (Unicode VARCHAR2(10 CHAR) and NVARCHAR2(10)) would be able to store the same data, however the byte storage will be different. Some strings may be stored more efficiently in one or the other.

Note also that some features won't work with NVARCHAR2, see this SO question:

• Oracle Text will not work with NVARCHAR2. What else might be unavailable?

Answer 2

I don't think answer from Vincent Malgrat is correct. When NVARCHAR2 was introduced long time ago nobody was even talking about Unicode.

Initially Oracle provided VARCHAR2 and NVARCHAR2 to support localization. Common data (include PL/SQL) was hold in VARCHAR2, most likely US7ASCII these days. Then you could apply NLS_NCHAR_CHARACTERSET individually (e.g. WE8ISO8859P1) for each of your customer in any country without touching the common part of your application.

Nowadays character set AL32UTF8 is the default which fully supports Unicode. In my opinion today there is no reason anymore to use NLS_NCHAR_CHARACTERSET, i.e. NVARCHAR2, NCHAR2, NCLOB. Maybe the only reason is when you have to support mainly Asian characters where AL16UTF16 consumes less storage compared to AL32UTF8.

Answer 3

• The NVARCHAR2 stores variable-length character data. When you create a table with the NVARCHAR2 column, the maximum size is always in character length semantics, which is also the default and only length semantics for the NVARCHAR2 data type.

  The NVARCHAR2data type uses AL16UTF16character set which encodes Unicode data in the UTF-16 encoding. The AL16UTF16 use 2 bytes to store a character. In addition, the maximum byte length of an NVARCHAR2 depends on the configured national character set.

• VARCHAR2 The maximum size of VARCHAR2 can be in either bytes or characters. Its column only can store characters in the default character set while the NVARCHAR2 can store virtually any characters. A single character may require up to 4 bytes.

By defining the field as:

• VARCHAR2(10 CHAR) you tell Oracle it can use enough space to store 10 characters, no matter how many bytes it takes to store each one. A single character may require up to 4 bytes.
• NVARCHAR2(10) you tell Oracle it can store 10 characters with 2 bytes per character

In Summary:

• VARCHAR2(10 CHAR) can store maximum of 10 characters and maximum of 40 bytes (depends on the configured national character set).

• NVARCHAR2(10) can store maximum of 10 characters and maximum of 20 bytes (depends on the configured national character set).

Note: Character set can be UTF-8, UTF-16,....

Please have a look at this tutorial for more detail.

Have a good day!

Answer 4

nVarchar2 is a Unicode-only storage.

Though both data types are variable length String datatypes, you can notice the difference in how they store values. Each character is stored in bytes. As we know, not all languages have alphabets with same length, eg, English alphabet needs 1 byte per character, however, languages like Japanese or Chinese need more than 1 byte for storing a character.

When you specify varchar2(10), you are telling the DB that only 10 bytes of data will be stored. But, when you say nVarchar2(10), it means 10 characters will be stored. In this case, you don't have to worry about the number of bytes each character takes.