Type synonym in oracle

Question

Is it possible to create a "type synonym" in oracle? Something like:

CREATE PUBLIC SYNONYM EmailType FOR VARCHAR2(120);

Answer 1

You cannot do that, but you might want to use SUBTYPE. Place SUBTYPE declaration inside of package and use that.

CREATE OR REPLACE PACKAGE SUBTYPES_PKG IS
  SUBTYPE EMAIL IS VARCHAR2(120);
END;

Answer 2

I don't have access to a database at the moment, so I'll check in the morning but I'm fairly sure you can do this. Although you can't create an object as a public synonym, you can create a synonym on almost any object.

CREATE OR REPLACE TYPE EmailType AS OBJECT( EMail VARCHAR2(120));
create or replace public synonym emailtype  for emailtype;

Answer 3

What you're looking for is known in other databases as a "domain" - and there ain't no domains in Oracle. Sorry for the bad news. To use a TYPE in Oracle you'll need something like

CREATE OR REPLACE TYPE EMAILTYPE AS OBJECT
  (
  strEmail  VARCHAR2(120)
  )

and then you'll probably need to define constructors and methods to operate on your type.

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