Sybase ASA Data Types

This article describes the data types supported by Sybase Adaptive Server Anywhere (ASA), Sybase SQL Anywhere 11.0.x and earlier.

Overview

Data Type	Parameters and Range

Character Data Types
CHAR(n) - Variable-length character data	1 ⇐ n ⇐ 32767/charsize, default is 1
NCHAR(n) - Variable-length character data in UTF8	1 ⇐ n ⇐ 8191, default is 1

Sybase ASA - CHAR
Syntax	CHAR[(n [CHAR\|CHARACTER])]
Data	Variable-length character data, single-byte and multibyte character sets
Parameters	n is the maximum number of bytes if CHAR/CHARACTER is not specified or characters if CHAR/CHARACTER is specified, optional
Range	1 ⇐ n ⇐ 32767/charsize
Default	n is 1
Padding	CHAR values are not right-padded with spaces to n
Storage Size	n bytes
Synonyms	CHARACTER
Standards	ANSI SQL

Sybase ASA CHAR - Equivalents in Other Databases

Sybase ASA - NCHAR
Syntax	CHAR[(n)]
Data	Variable-length character data in Unicode - UTF-8
Parameters	n is the maximum number of characters, optional
Range	1 ⇐ n ⇐ 8191
Default	n is 1
Padding	NCHAR values are not right-padded with spaces to n
Storage Size	n bytes
Synonyms	NATIONAL CHAR or NATIONAL CHARACTER
Standards	ANSI SQL

Sybase ASA 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
Informix DS	NCHAR(n), 1 ⇐ n ⇐ 32767, database character set
Teradata	CHAR(n), 1 ⇐ n ⇐ 64000/charsize
HP Neoview	NCHAR(n), 1 ⇐ n ⇐ 4036, 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

Data Types in Other Databases

Oracle

SQL Server

IBM DB2

MySQL

PostgreSQL

Sybase ASE

Informix DS

Teradata

HP Neoview

Interbase/Firebird

Ingres