Database Administration &

Management
Chapter 4 – Oracle Data Structures

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Datatypes
 Datatype is one of the attributes for a column or a variable in a stored
procedure.
• Describes and limits the type of information stored in a column.
• Can limit the operations that can be performed on columns.
 Three basic categories of Oracle datatypes:
1. Character datatypes
2. Numeric datatypes
3. Datatype that represent other kinds of data

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Character Datatypes
 Can store any string value including the string representations of
numeric values.
 Assigning a value larger than the length specified or allowed for a
character datatype results in a runtime error.
 Types:
• CHAR
• VARCHAR2
• NCHAR and NVARCHAR2
• LONG
• CLOB and NCLOB

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Character Datatypes
 CHAR
• Stores character values with a fixed length.
• Fixed length can be between 1 and 2,000.
• If you don’t explicitly specify a length for a CHAR, it assumes the
default length of 1.
• If you assign a value that’s shorter than the length specified for the
CHAR datatype, Oracle will automatically pad the value with blanks.
• Example:
– CHAR (4) = “AB ”

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Character Datatypes
 VARCHAR2
• Stores variable-length character strings.
• Assigned length to a VARCHAR2 datatype is the maximum length for a
value rather than the required length.
• Values assigned to a VARCHAR2 datatype are not padded with blanks.
• Can require less storage than a CHAR datatype.
• Maximum length is 32000 characters for Oracle 12c and 4000 characters
for earlier releases.
• VARCHAR and VARCHAR2 datatypes are synonymous, but Oracle
recommends the use of VARCHAR2.
• Example:
– VARCHAR2(4) = “AB”
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Character Datatypes
 NCHAR and NVARCHAR2
• Stores a fixed-length or variable-length character data, respectively,
using a different character set from the one used by the rest of the
database.
• At the time of database creation, a secondary character set can be
specified which is known as the National Language Set, or NLS.
• This secondary character set will be used for NCHAR and
NVARCHAR2 columns.
• For example, you may have a description field in which you want to
store Japanese characters while the rest of the database uses English
encoding. You would specify a secondary character set that supports
Japanese characters when you create the database, and then use the
NCHAR or NVARCHAR2 datatype for the columns in question. 6
Character Datatypes
 LONG
• Can hold up to 2 GB of character data.
• A legacy datatype from earlier versions of Oracle which is not
recommended to be used.
• Oracle recommends to use the CLOB and NCLOB datatypes.
 CLOB and NCLOB
• CLOB (Character Large Object) datatype can store up to 128 TBs of
character data, depending on the block size of the database.
• CLOB is used to store Unicode character-based data.
• NCLOB datatype stores the National Language character set data.

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Numeric Datatype
 The Oracle NUMBER data type is used to store numeric values.
 NUMBER stores numeric values with a precision of up to 38 digits.
 NUMBER datatype can accept two qualifiers:
column NUMBER( precision, scale )
• Precision specifies the total number of significant digits in the number (1-38).
Default value is 38 if no value is specified for precision.
• Scale represents the number of digits to the right of the decimal point. Default
value is 0 if no value is specified for scale.
 If you assign a negative number to the scale, Oracle will round the number up
to the designated place to the left of the decimal point.
 Example:
column_round NUMBER(10,−2) 8
Date Datatype
 Oracle stores all dates and times in a standard internal format.
 Standard input for date: DD-MON-YY HH:MI:SS
• DD represents up to two digits for the day of the month
• MON is a three-character abbreviation for the month
• YY is a two-digit representation of the year
• HH, MI, and SS are two-digit representations of hours, minutes, and seconds.
• The default time values are all zeros in the internal storage.
 Oracle SQL supports date arithmetic in which integers represent days and
fractions represent the fractional component represented by hours, minutes,
and seconds.
 Example:
• 12-DEC-07 + 10 = 22-DEC-07
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• 31-DEC-2007:23:59:59 + .25 = 1-JAN-2008:5:59:59
Other Datatypes
 Aside from the basic character, number, and date datatypes, Oracle
supports a number of specialized datatypes:
• RAW and LONG RAW
• ROWID
• ORA_ROWSCN
• LOB
• BFILE
• XMLType
• Identity datatype

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Type Conversion
 Oracle implicitly converts some datatypes to other datatypes.
• Assigning a character value such as 10 to a NUMBER column results in
an automatic data conversion.
 Supports explicit conversions on data, using a variety of conversion
functions.
• to_char()
• to_date()
• to_number()

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Concatenation
 Concatenation operator is two vertical lines (||).
 Concatenation is performed with two character values.
• Automatic type conversion allows to concatenate two numeric values,
resulting in a character string.
• Example:
NUM1 || NUM2 || NUM3 = "123"
NUM1 || NUM2 + NUM3 = "15" (1 || 2 + 3)
NUM1 + NUM2 || NUM3 = "33" (1+ 2 || 3)

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Comparisons
 Comparisons between values of the same datatype work as:
• Date that occurs later in time is larger than an earlier date.
• 0 or any positive number is larger than any negative number.
• You can use relational operators
• Comparisons of single characters are based on the underlying code pages
for the characters.
• Multicharacter strings are compared until the first character that differs
between the two strings appears.
– Strings of different lengths are compared using two different comparison
semantics: blank-padded comparisons and nonpadded comparisons.

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NULLs
 Represents the lack of a value.
 One of the key features of the relational database.
 NULL can be assigned as a value for any datatype.
 NOT NULL specifies that a column must have a value.
 Three-state logic to SQL operators
• Comparison that involves a NULL value, results in three logical states:
TRUE, FALSE, and neither.
• NULL value is not equal to 0 or any other value.
• IS NULL tests for the presence of a NULL value.

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Basic Data Structures
 Three basic Oracle data structures:
1. Tables
2. Views
3. Indexes

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Tables
 The basic data structure used in a relational database.
 A table is a collection of rows with one or more columns.

 External tables
• Data is stored outside the database in a file.
• Data in external tables cannot be updated, they are read-only.
• Are used to load/unload data to files

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Views
 A view is an Oracle data structure defined through a SQL statement.
 The SQL statement is stored in the database.
 When you use a view in a query, the stored query is executed and the
base table data is returned to the user.
 Views do not contain data, but represent ways to look at the base table
data in the way the query specifies.
 A view is built on a collection of base tables, which can be either
actual tables in an Oracle database or other views.

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Views
 Views are useful for several purposes:
• Simplify access to data stored in multiple tables.
• Implement security for the data in a table.
• Isolates an application from the specific structure of the underlying
tables.
 Materialized views
• Are not really views, but are physical tables that hold pre-summarized
data.
• Provides significant performance improvements in a data warehouse.

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Indexes
 An index is a data structure that speeds up access to particular rows in
a database.
 An index is associated with a particular table.
 Index contains data from one or more columns in the table.
 DBMS automatically modifies the values in the index when the values
in the corresponding columns are modified.
 In addition to the data for an index, an index entry stores the ROWID
for its associated row.
 Example - SQL syntax for creating an index:
CREATE INDEX emp_idx1 ON emp (ename, job);
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Indexes
 Indexes are faster to read
• Index contains less data than the complete row in the table.
• Indexes are stored in a special structure that are faster to read.
• Most indexes are stored in sorted order.
• Index entry stores the ROWID for its associated row, which enables fast
retrieval of any row in a database.

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Indexes
 Unique index
• No two rows in the table can have the same index value
• If the table contains rows with duplicate key values, the index creation process
fails.
 Non-unique Index
• Rows in the table can have the same index value
 If the column or columns on which an index is based contain NULL values,
the row is not included in the index.

• An index in Oracle refers to the physical structure used within the database.
• A key is a term for a logical entity, typically the value stored within the index.
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