Think about where each field is going to be used. Don't blindly go thru setting all character fields to varchar2(255). This is especially important for fields that will be printed on paper, like say an address. You 'designed' your DB with an address line of 255 potential length. Your front-end programmer 'designed' his application to validate length based on length of db-storage, so he willfully accepts all 255 chars and stores them in your DB. When someone goes to print out a mailing list from your DB, quite likely any address line longer than 50 chars won't print completely, resulting in an undelivered piece of mail, and an annoyed customer. Or it could be an employee missing his paycheck.