Progress
Version 9
Product Update Bulletin


Character Data Type Enhancements

This section describes the changes to the data type VARCHAR.

This is the new syntax for a char_data_type:

SYNTAX
{ CHARACTER | CHAR } [ ( length ) ] 
  | { CHARACTER VARYING | CHAR VARYING | VARCHAR } [ ( length ) ]  

VARCHAR [ ( length ) ]

Type VARCHAR corresponds to variable-length character string with the maximum length specified. The default length is 1. The maximum length is 31995.

Maximum Length For VARCHAR

Specifically, the maximum length or maximum number of characters for the VARCHAR data type is:

The maximum length of the VARCHAR data type depends on:

National Language Support (NLS)

The VARCHAR data type has NLS. The choice of character set affects the available character count or maximum length of the data column. The limits established above assume a single-byte character set. Using a multiple-byte character set lowers the maximum character count proportionally. For example, if all the characters in a character set take 3 bytes per character, in Version 9 the practical maximum is 10660 (31982 divided by 3).


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