Oralce官方文件“Datatypes”部分對NVARCHAR2、VARCHAR2以及VARCHAR有一段描述，可以清晰得到它們的。羅列在此，供大家參考。
【連結】
NVARCHAR2 Datatype
The NVARCHAR2 datatype is a Unicode-only datatype. When you create a table with an NVARCHAR2 column, you supply the maximum number of characters it can hold. subsequently stores each value in the column exactly as you specify it, provided the value does not exceed the maximum length of the column.
The maximum length of the column is determined by the national character set definition. Width specifications of character datatype NVARCHAR2 refer to the number of characters. The maximum column size allowed is 4000 bytes. Please refer to Oracle Database Globalization Support Guide for information on Unicode datatype support.
VARCHAR2 Datatype
The VARCHAR2 datatype specifies a variable-length character string. When you create a VARCHAR2 column, you supply the maximum number of bytes or characters of data that it can hold. Oracle subsequently stores each value in the column exactly as you specify it, provided the value does not exceed the column's maximum length of the column. If you try to insert a value that exceeds the specified length, then Oracle returns an error.
You must specify a maximum length for a VARCHAR2 column. This maximum must be at least 1 byte, although the actual string stored is permitted to be a zero-length string (''). You can use the CHAR qualifier, for example VARCHAR2(10 CHAR), to give the maximum length in characters instead of bytes. A character is technically a code point of the database character set. CHAR and BYTE qualifiers override the setting of the NLS_LENGTH_SEMANTICS parameter, which has a default of bytes. For performance reasons, Oracle recommends that you use the NLS_LENGTH_SEMANTICS parameter to set length semantics and that you use the BYTE and CHAR qualifiers only when necessary to override the parameter. The maximum length of VARCHAR2 data is 4000 bytes. Oracle compares VARCHAR2 values using nonpadded comparison semantics.
To ensure proper data conversion between databases with different character sets, you must ensure that VARCHAR2 data consists of well-formed strings. See Oracle Database Globalization Support Guide for more information on character set support.
VARCHAR Datatype
Do not use the VARCHAR datatype. Use the VARCHAR2 datatype instead. Although the VARCHAR datatype is currently synonymous with VARCHAR2, the VARCHAR datatype is scheduled to be redefined as a separate datatype used for variable-length character strings compared with different comparison semantics.
【注意】
VARCHAR2是Oracle提供的特定資料型別，Oracle可以保證VARCHAR2在任何版本中該資料型別都可以向上和向下相容。
VARCHAR在Oracle中不建議使用。
具體到NVARCHAR2和VARCHAR2的區別，從使用角度來看區別在於：NVARCHAR2在計算長度時和字符集相關的，例如資料庫是中文字符集時以長度10為例，則
1、NVARCHAR2(10)是可以存進去10個漢字的，如果用來存英文也只能存10個字元。
2、而VARCHAR2(10)的話，則只能存進5個漢字，英文則可以存10個。