ORA-12899 Error Too large String for Same column but success different tables

Question

I am updating string to column of length 35 into two tables

first table update was success but second table give ORA error ORA-12899 Error Too large String

select length('Andres Peñalver D1 Palmar Sani salt') bytes from dual;

     BYTES
----------
        35

select lengthb('Andres Peñalver D1 Palmar Sani salt') bytes from dual;

     BYTES
----------
        36

Both tables colm1 field declared as VARCHAR(35), first table update fails and second one success.

update t
set colm1='Andres Peñalver D1 Palmar Sani Salt'
where value1='123456';

update t2
set colm1='Andres Peñalver D1 Palmar Sani Salt'
where value1='123456';

ORA-12899

select value from nls_database_parameters where parameter='NLS_CHARACTERSET';

VALUE                                                           
----------------------------------------------------------------
AL32UTF8

let me know why this behaviour for these table which is having same column type

Answer 1

Check the actual columns size for both the tables in all_tab_columns. 35 Char is 3 times 35 bytes, and if one table's column is defined in char other in byte(during ddl) the size is different. Normal characters like A-Z a-z take 1 byte to store but language specific characters take 3 byte to store.

Answer 2

The full error message as described in the error message documentation should give you the answer:

$ oerr ora 12899
12899, 00000, "value too large for column %s (actual: %s, maximum: %s)"
// *Cause: An attempt was made to insert or update a column with a value
//         which is too wide for the width of the destination column.
//         The name of the column is given, along with the actual width
//         of the value, and the maximum allowed width of the column.
//         Note that widths are reported in characters if character length
//         semantics are in effect for the column, otherwise widths are
//         reported in bytes.
// *Action: Examine the SQL statement for correctness.  Check source
//          and destination column data types.
//          Either make the destination column wider, or use a subset
//          of the source column (i.e. use substring).

This is likely linked to character length semantics.