BINARY data type

The BINARY data type is used to store binary data of a specified maximum length (in bytes).

Syntax
BINARY [ ( max-length ) ]
Parameters
  • max-length   The maximum length of the value, in bytes. The length must be in the range 1 to 32767. If the length is not specified, then it is 1.

Remarks

During comparisons, BINARY values are compared exactly byte for byte. This differs from the CHAR data type, where values are compared using the collation sequence of the database. If one binary string is a prefix of the other, the shorter string is considered to be less than the longer string.

Unlike CHAR values, BINARY values are not transformed during character set conversion.

BINARY is semantically equivalent to VARBINARY. It is a variable-length type. In other database management systems, BINARY is a fixed-length type.

See also
Standards and compatibility
  • SQL/2003   Vendor extension.