Select Text, Unitext, and Image Values

text, unitext, and image values can be quite large. When a select list includes the values for these datatypes, the limit on the length of the data returned depends on the setting of the @@textsize global variable.

The default setting for @@textsize depends on the software you use to access SAP ASE; the default value for for isql is 32K. To change the value, use the set command:

set textsize 2147483648

With this setting of @@textsize, a select statement that includes a text column displays only the first 2 gigabytes of the data.

Note: When you select image data, the returned value includes the characters “0x”, which indicates that the data is hexadecimal. These two characters are counted as part of @@textsize.

To reset @@textsize to the SAP ASE default value, use:

set textsize 0

If the actual length of returned data is less than textsize, the entire data string appears.