Database Software

hi guys,

i am not sure if this is the correct place to ask, but i got most of my knowledge here so i have decided to ask here.

i am reading up on raw datatype and i was told that the difference between raw and varchar2 datatype is that during migration, oracle will not handle the conversion of the raw datatype datas.

so my question, what is raw ? and how raw is raw ?
does it means that, if i have declare my datatype as raw, whatever data coming into that column will not be handle by oracle.

meaning nls_lang will be ignored ?

example,
on my computer i am using acsii7 character set / keyboard with nls_lang set to ascii7 or equivalent. On oracle, it is using a al32utf8 character set.

does it means that if i declare a column as raw, whatever character i enter into that column, it will be of ascii7 encoding/pattern.

does raw means that way ? it is always say that raw store data in pure binary form .. but aint all data stored in binary as well ? i dont seems to grasp the idea.

any advices please
gurus,

regards,
noob