Sybase ASE Data Types - NCHAR

Versions: Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise 15.x, 12.5.x, 12.0 and 11.x

Sybase ASE - NCHAR
Syntax	NCHAR[(n)]
Data	Fixed-length character data, single-byte and multibyte character sets
Parameters	n is the maximum number of characters, optional
Range	1 ⇐ n ⇐ pagesize/@@ncharsize
Default	n is 1
Padding	Right-padded with spaces to n only if NOT NULL
Character Set	Database default
Empty String	“” is padded with spaces to n
Error Handling	Exceeding data truncated without warning if set string_rtruncation off specified (default), otherwise an error is raised
Storage Size	n*@@ncharsize bytes
Internals	If defined as NULL, it is automatically converted to NVARCHAR without warning
Notes	The only difference between NCHAR and CHAR is that, in NCHAR, n is the maximum number of characters (storage size in bytes can be more than n), while, in CHAR, n is the maximum number of bytes (less than n characters can be actually allowed)
Synonyms	NATIONAL CHAR, NATIONAL CHARACTER
Standards	ANSI SQL

Sybase ASE NCHAR - Equivalents in Other Databases

Database	Data Type and Conversion
Oracle	NCHAR(n), 1 ⇐ n ⇐ 2000/charsize, Unicode - UTF-8 or UTF-16
SQL Server	NCHAR(n), 1 ⇐ n ⇐ 4000, Unicode - UCS-2
IBM DB2	GRAPHIC(n), 1 ⇐ n ⇐ 127, double-byte
MySQL	NCHAR(n), 0 ⇐ n ⇐ 255, Unicode - UTF8 and TEXT or VARCHAR(n), if n > 255
PostgreSQL	CHAR(n), 1 ⇐ n ⇐ 1G
Sybase ASA	NCHAR(n), 1 ⇐ n ⇐ 8191, Unicode - UTF-8
Informix	NCHAR(n), 1 ⇐ n ⇐ 32767, database character set
Teradata	CHAR(n), 1 ⇐ n ⇐ 64000/charsize
HP Neoview	NCHAR(n), 1 ⇐ n ⇐ (32708 - size of other columns), Unicode - UCS-2 or ISO88591 (Latin1)
Interbase/Firebird	NCHAR(n), 1 ⇐ n ⇐ 32767, single-byte ISO8859_1 (Latin 1); CHAR(n), 1 ⇐ n ⇐ 32767, with CHARACTER SET UTF-8
Ingres	NCHAR(n), 1 ⇐ n ⇐ 16000, Unicode - UTF-8

Related Data Types in Sybase ASE

Data Types
Fixed-length character data	CHAR(n)	UNICHAR(n)
Variable-length character data	VARCHAR(n)	NVARCHAR(n)	UNIVARCHAR(n)
Character large objects	TEXT	UNITEXT

All Data Types

Oracle

SQL Server

IBM DB2

MySQL

PostgreSQL

Sybase ASE

Sybase ASA

Informix DS

Teradata

HP Neoview

Interbase/Firebird

Ingres