SQL Error: ORA-12899: value too large for column

Question

I have created the following table

CREATE TABLE Customers(
  CustomerID varchar2(9) PRIMARY KEY, 
  Customer_Contact varchar2(40) NOT NULL, 
  Address varchar2(20) NOT NULL,
  Post_Code varchar2(7) NOT NULL, 
  Telephone_Number varchar2(11) NOT NULL)

And I am currently trying to use the INSERT VALUES statement. I have written the following statement

INSERT INTO Customers VALUES(
  501623129, 
  'John Petterson', 
  '-- Singleton Close London', 
  '--- ---', 02082860222)

When I try to run the statement it gives me the following error message.

Error starting at line 4 in command: INSERT INTO Customers VALUES(501623129, 'David Patterson', '30 Singleton Close London', 'SW17 9JY', 02082860642) Error report: SQL Error: ORA-12899: value too large for column "DJ"."CUSTOMERS"."ADDRESS" (actual: 25, maximum: 20) 12899. 00000 - "value too large for column %s (actual: %s, maximum: %s)"

Answer 1

ORA-12899: value too large for column "DJ"."CUSTOMERS"."ADDRESS" (actual: 25, maximum: 2

Tells you what the error is. Address can hold maximum of 20 characters, you are passing 25 characters.

Answer 2

As mentioned, the error message shows you the exact problem: you are passing 25 characters into a field set up to hold 20. You might also want to consider defining the columns a little more precisely. You can define whether the VARCHAR2 column will store a certain number of bytes or characters. You may encounter a problem in the future where you try to insert a multi byte character into the field, for example this is 5 characters in length but it won't fit into 5 bytes: 'ÀÈÌÕÛ'

Here is an example:

CREATE TABLE Customers(CustomerID  VARCHAR2(9 BYTE), ...

or

CREATE TABLE Customers(CustomerID  VARCHAR2(9 CHAR), ...

Answer 3

This answer still comes up high in the list for ORA-12899 and lot of non helpful comments above, even if they are old. The most helpful comment was #4 for any professional trying to find out why they are getting this when loading data.

Some characters are more than 1 byte in length, especially true on SQL Server. And what might fit in a varchar(20) in SQLServer won't fit into a similar varchar2(20) in Oracle.

I ran across this error yesterday with SSIS loading an Oracle database with the Attunity drivers and thought I would save folks some time.

Answer 4

In my case I'm using C# OracleCommand with OracleParameter, and I set all the the parameters Size property to max length of each column, then the error solved.

OracleParameter parm1 = new OracleParameter();
param1.OracleDbType = OracleDbType.Varchar2;
param1.Value = "test1";
param1.Size = 8;

OracleParameter parm2 = new OracleParameter();
param2.OracleDbType = OracleDbType.Varchar2;
param2.Value = "test1";
param2.Size = 12;