When you use CHAR and VARCHAR2 data types for storing multilingual data, the maximum length specified for each column is, by default, in number of bytes. If the database
needs to support Thai, Arabic, or multibyte languages such as Chinese and Japanese, then the maximum lengths of the CHAR, VARCHAR, and VARCHAR2 columns may need to be extended. This is because the number of bytes required to encode these languages in UTF8 or AL32UTF8 may be significantly larger than the number of bytes for encoding English and Western European languages. For example, one Thai character in the Thai character set requires 3 bytes in UTF8 or AL32UTF8. In addition, the maximum column lengths for CHAR, VARCHAR, and VARCHAR2 data types are 2000 bytes, 4000 bytes, and 4000 bytes respectively. If applications need to store more than 4000 bytes, then they should use the CLOB data type
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