Hi, using copy into, I run into a problem where a string does not fit into my varchar column. So the first point is that the error message is quite misleading, as it states 'field 4 not inserted, expecting type str'. Well, it is a string, but the length is too long... Using insert into, the error message will be 'SQLException:str_cast:value too long for type (var)char(100)' which is much more helpful. The second point is that my string is 99 characters long, and utf-8 with accented characters. So its length is less than 100 characters but more than 100 bytes. In postgresql, where my data come from, varchar(100) means 100 characters, whatever encoding the database happen to be in. Oracle gives the choise with varchar2(100 char) or varchar2(100 byte) and will default to NLS_LENGTH_SEMANTICS (which in turn is BYTE by default). I guess in monetdb, it means 100 bytes... Am I right stating that, and is it the expected behaviour or a bug ? Franck