The following table shows the built-in general-purpose data types.

Table 3-1 Data Types

Name	Alias	Description
BLOB	LONG RAW, RAW(n)	Binary data
BOOLEAN		Logical Boolean (true/false)
CHAR [ (n) ]	CHARACTER [ (n) ]	Fixed-length character string of n characters
CLOB	LONG, LONG VARCHAR	Long character string
DATE	TIMESTAMP(0)	Date and time to the second
DOUBLE PRECISION	FLOAT, FLOAT(25) – FLOAT(53)	Double precision floating-point number
INTEGER	INT, BINARY_INTEGER	Signed four-byte integer
NUMBER	DEC, DECIMAL, NUMERIC	Exact numeric with optional decimal places
NUMBER(p [, s ])	DEC(p [, s ]), DECIMAL(p [, s ]), NUMERIC(p [, s ])	Exact numeric of maximum precision, p, and optional scale, s
REAL	FLOAT(1) – FLOAT(24)	Single precision floating-point number
TIMESTAMP [ (p) ]		Date and time with optional, fractional second precision, p
VARCHAR2(n)	CHAR VARYING(n), CHARACTER VARYING(n), VARCHAR(n)	Variable-length character string with a maximum length of n characters

The following sections describe each data type in more detail.