The text and image Adaptive Server datatypes hold large text or image values. The text datatype will hold up to 2,147,483,647 bytes of printable characters. The image datatype will hold up to 2,147,483,647 bytes of binary data.
Because they can be so large, text and image values are not actually stored in database tables. Instead, a pointer to the text or image value is stored in the table. This pointer is called a text pointer.
To ensure that competing client applications do not overwrite one another’s modifications to the database, a timestamp is associated with each text or image column. This timestamp is called a text timestamp.
