materialized view character column width issue between Oracle 8i and Oracle 10

Hi Expert:

In our existing systems, there are materialized view from Oracle 8.1.7.2 DB  (table source) to Oracle 10.1.0.4 DB (target) created long time ago.   I just found that character length for the same column is not the same between master and replicated tables even though both DBs are on the same UTF8 character set.

For example, in the master table (Oracle EE 8.1.7.2,  UTF8 character set), the source table is:

Name                                                                          Null?              Type

----------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------                ------------

SALES_CHANL                                                           NOT NULL      CHAR(4)

CHANL_NAME                                                                                 VARCHAR2(60)

CO_CDE                                                                    NOT NULL      CHAR(3)

VAT_PCT                                                                                          NUMBER(7,2)

REGN_CDE                                                                                        VARCHAR2(3)

In the replicated table (Oracle EE 10.1.0.4), the materialized view (created by a simply SQL select from master table) is: