Automatic trim of too long strings

Question

Hi,
if I try to insert a too long string value into a VARCHAR column, I get the error ORA-12899.
Is it possible to set the Oracle database so that too long strings get trimmed automatically?
Thank you.

Answer 1

Hi,
Welcome to the forum!
Unfortunately, there's nothing quite like what you want in Oracle.
Even if you write a trigger to cut off the excess, you can still get the ORA-12899 error. For example, if table_x.col_1 is defined as VARCHAR2 (10), this statement:
INSERT INTO table_x (col_1) VALUES ('ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOP');will get the error, even if you have a trigger that says
:NEW.col_1 := SUBSTR (:NEW.col_1, 1, 10);You could define col_1 as VARCHAR2 (4000), and have a trigger that includes the statement show above, to make sure that the actual values will be 10 characters or less. You cound even have a CHECK constraint (LENGH (col_1) <= 10).
Think carefully about what Someoneelse said. Do you really want to throw away part of what users enter, automatically and without any warning? Will that cause confusion?