Oracle datatype restrictions

See the Mirror Activator Release Bulletin for the latest information on datatype restrictions.

Replication Server and Mirror Replication Agent impose the following constraints on the Oracle NUMBER datatype:

In the integer representation:
- The corresponding Sybase int datatype has a smaller absolute maximum value.
  
  The Oracle NUMBER absolute maximum value is 38 digits of precision, between 9.9 x 10¹²⁵ and 1 x 10^-130. The Sybase int value is between 2³¹ - 1 and -2³¹ (2,147,483,647 and -2,147,483,648), inclusive.
- Oracle NUMBER values greater than the Sybase int maximum are rejected by Replication Server.
In the floating point representation:
- The precision of the floating point representation has the same range limitation as the integer representation.
- If the floating point value is outside the Sybase range of 2³¹ - 1 and -2³¹ (2,147,483,647 and -2,147,483,648), Mirror Replication Agent for Oracle converts the number into exponential format to make it acceptable to Replication Server. No loss of precision or scale occurs.

Replication Server and Mirror Replication Agent impose the following constraints on the Oracle TIMESTAMP WITH [LOCAL] TIME ZONE datatype:

When a TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE datatype is replicated, the time zone information is used to resolve the timestamp value to the “local” time zone and then the resolved value is replicated. (The time zone information itself is not replicated.)
For example, if a TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE datatype is recorded in Oracle as “01-JAN-05 09:00:00.000000 AM -8:00” and the “local” time zone is -6:00, the value replicated will be “01-JAN-05 11:00:00.000000”. The timestamp value is adjusted for the difference between the recorded timezone of -8:00 and the local time zone of -6:00, and the adjusted value is replicated.

If you use a version of Replication Server prior to 12.5, the following size restrictions are imposed on Oracle datatypes:

Oracle BLOB, CLOB, NCLOB, and BFILE datatypes that contain more than 2GB are truncated to 2GB.
Oracle CHAR, RAW, ROWID, and VARCHAR2 datatypes that contain more than 255 bytes are truncated to 255 bytes.
Oracle NCHAR and NVARCHAR2 multibyte character datatypes are replicated as char or varchar single-byte datatypes.

With Replication Server 12.5 or later, these datatype size restrictions are no longer in effect.

The following Oracle datatypes are not supported: