Get data type of field in select statement in ORACLE

I found a not-very-intuitive way to do this by using DUMP()

SELECT DUMP(A.NAME), 
       DUMP(A.surname), 
       DUMP(B.ordernum) 
FROM   customer A 
       JOIN orders B 
         ON A.id = B.id

It will return something like:

'Typ=1 Len=2: 0,48' for each column.

Type=1 means VARCHAR2/NVARCHAR2
Type=2 means NUMBER/FLOAT
Type=12 means DATE, etc.

You can refer to this oracle doc for information Datatype Code
or this for a simple mapping Oracle Type Code Mappings

You can query the all_tab_columns view in the database.

SELECT  table_name, column_name, data_type, data_length FROM all_tab_columns where table_name = 'CUSTOMER'

I came into the same situation. As a workaround, I just created a view (If you have privileges) and described it and dropped it later. :)

I usually create a view and use the DESC command:

CREATE VIEW tmp_view AS 
SELECT 
      a.name
    , a.surname
    , b.ordernum 
FROM customer a
  JOIN orders b
    ON a.id = b.id

Then, the DESC command will show the type of each field.

DESC tmp_view

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