Character large object (CLOB) data in Sybase IQ is stored in columns of data type LONG VARCHAR or CLOB.
An individual LONG VARCHAR data value can have a length ranging from zero (0) to 512TB (terabytes) for an IQ page size of 128KB, or 2PB (petabytes) for an IQ page size of 512KB. (The maximum length is equal to 4GB multiplied by the database page size.) To accommodate a table with LONG VARCHAR data, an IQ database must be created with an IQ page size of at least 64KB (65536 bytes).
A table or database can contain any number of LONG VARCHAR columns up to the supported maximum columns per table and maximum columns per database, respectively.
Sybase IQ supports both single-byte and multibyte LONG VARCHAR data.
LONG VARCHAR columns can be either NULL or NOT NULL, and can store zero-length values. The domain CLOB is a LONG VARCHAR data type that allows NULL. To create a non-null LONG VARCHAR column, explicitly specify NOT NULL in the column definition.
You can create a LONG VARCHAR column using the domain CLOB, when you create a table or add a column to an existing table. For example:
CREATE TABLE lvtab (c1 INTEGER, c2 CLOB, c3 CLOB NOT NULL);
ALTER TABLE lvtab ADD c4 CLOB;
You can create a WORD (WD) index on a LONG VARCHAR column. You cannot construct other non-FP index types and join indexes on a LONG VARCHAR column.
You can modify a LONG VARCHAR column using the UPDATE, INSERT...VALUES, INSERT...SELECT, LOAD TABLE, DELETE, TRUNCATE, SELECT...INTO and INSERT...LOCATION SQL statements. Positioned updates and deletes are not supported on LONG VARCHAR columns.
You can insert an Adaptive Server Enterprise TEXT column into a LONG VARCHAR column using the INSERT...LOCATION command. All TEXT data inserted is silently right-truncated at 2147483648 bytes (2GB).
There are no implicit data type conversions from the LONG VARCHAR data type to another non-LONG VARCHAR data type, except LONG BINARY, and CHAR and VARCHAR for INSERT and UPDATE only. There are implicit conversions to LONG VARCHAR data type from CHAR and VARCHAR data types. There are no implicit conversions from BIT, REAL, DOUBLE, NUMERIC, TINYINT, SMALLINT, INT, UNSIGNED INT, BIGINT, UNSIGNED BIGINT, BINARY, VARBINARY, or LONG BINARY data types to LONG VARCHAR data type. Implicit conversion can be controlled using the CONVERSION_MODE database option.
The currently supported string functions for the LONG VARCHAR data type are accepted as input for implicit conversion for the INSERT and UPDATE statements. See Chapter 9, “Function Support.”
The LONG VARCHAR data type can be explicitly converted to CHAR and VARCHAR. No other explicit data type conversions (for example, using the CAST or CONVERT function) exist either to or from the LONG VARCHAR data type.
Truncation of LONG VARCHAR data during conversion of LONG VARCHAR to CHAR is handled the same way the truncation of CHAR data is handled. If the STRING_RTRUNCATION option is ON and string right-truncation of non-spaces occurs, a truncation error is reported and the transaction is rolled back. Trailing partial multibyte characters are replaced with spaces on conversion.
Truncation of LONG VARCHAR data during conversion of LONG VARCHAR to VARCHAR is handled the same way the truncation of VARCHAR data is handled. If the STRING_RTRUNCATION option is ON and string right-truncation of non-spaces occurs, a truncation error is reported and the transaction is rolled back. Trailing partial multibyte characters are truncated on conversion.
