Storing more than 2000 characters in a varchar2 column in Oracle 11g?
We have a table in Oracle 11g with a varchar2 column. We use a proprietary programming language where this column is defined as string. Maximum we can store 2000 characters (4000 bytes) in this column. Now the requirement is such that the column needs to store more than 2000 characters. The DBAs don't like BLOB, CLOB or LONG datatypes for maintenance reasons.
There are 2 solutions I can think of -
1. Remove this column from the original table and have a separate table for this column and then store each character in a row, in order to get more than 2000 characters. This table will be joined with the original table for queries.
2. If maximum I need is 8000 characters, can I just add 3 more columns so that I will have 4 columns with 2000 char each to get 8000 chars. So when the first column is full, values would be spilled over to the next column and so on.
Which one is a better and easier approach? Please suggest.