Adaptive Server, SQL Anywhere and SAP Sybase IQ permit CHAR and VARCHAR data, but each product treats these types differently.
SAP Sybase IQ treats all strings as VARCHAR, even in a blank-padded database.
Adaptive Server and SAP Sybase IQ differentiate between CHAR (fixed-length) and VARCHAR (variable-length) data.
Adaptive Server trims trailing blank spaces from VARCHAR values. SAP Sybase IQ trims trailing blanks from VARCHAR values depending on the form of the data and the operation.
SQL Anywhere permits inserting integral data types into CHAR or VARCHAR (implicit conversion).
Adaptive Server and SAP Sybase IQ require explicit conversion.
2K page size allows a column as large as a single row, about 1962 bytes.
4K page size allows a column as large as about 4010 bytes.
SQL Anywhere supports up to 32K-1 with CHAR and VARCHAR, and up to 2GB with LONG VARCHAR.
SQL Anywhere supports the name LONG VARCHAR and its synonym TEXT, while Adaptive Server supports only the name TEXT, not the name LONG VARCHAR.
SAP Sybase IQ supports CHAR and VARCHAR up to 32K-1 bytes.
SAP Sybase IQ also supports up to 512TB (with an SAP Sybase IQ page size of 128KB) and 2PB (with an SAP Sybase IQ page size of 512KB) with LONG VARCHAR. For information on the LONG VARCHAR data type in SAP Sybase IQ, see Unstructured Data Analytics.
Adaptive Server supports NCHAR, NVARCHAR, UNICHAR, UNIVARCHAR data types. N is for multibyte character sets; UNI is for single-byte character sets.
SQL Anywhere and SAP Sybase IQ support Unicode in the CHAR and VARCHAR data types, rather than as a separate data type.
For compatibility between SAP Sybase IQ and Adaptive Server, always specify a length for character data types.