Informix Dynamic Server (IDS) Data Types - NCHAR

Versions: Informix Dynamic Server 11.x, 10.x, 9.x and 7.x

Informix DS - NCHAR
Syntax	NCHAR[(n)]
Data	Fixed-length character data in the specified collation, single-byte and multibyte character sets
Parameters	n is the maximum number of bytes, optional
Range	1 ⇐ n ⇐ 32767
Default	n is 1
Padding	Right-padded with spaces to n
Error Handling	Exceeding data truncated without warning
Storage Size	n bytes
Synonyms	NATIONAL CHAR, NATIONAL CHARACTER
Standards	ANSI SQL

Example:

CREATE TABLE t_nchar (c1 NCHAR(11));

Informix DS 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 - UTF-8 and TEXT or VARCHAR(n), if n > 255
PostgreSQL	CHAR(n), 1 ⇐ n ⇐ 1G
Sybase ASE	NCHAR(n), 1 ⇐ n ⇐ pagesize (2K, 4K, 8K or 16K); UNICHAR(n), 1 ⇐ n ⇐ pagesize, Unicode
Sybase ASA	NCHAR(n), 1 ⇐ n ⇐ 8191, Unicode - UTF-8
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 Informix

Data Types
Fixed-length Character Data	CHAR(n)
Variable-length Character Data	VARCHAR(n,r)	NVARCHAR(n,r)	LVARCHAR(n)
Character Large Objects	TEXT	CLOB

All Data Types

Oracle

SQL Server

IBM DB2

MySQL

PostgreSQL

Sybase ASE

Sybase ASA

Informix DS

Teradata

HP Neoview

Interbase/Firebird

Ingres