Character Datatypes

Learn about character datatypes.

Note: The Unicode datatypes unichar, univarchar, and unitext have the same attributes as their char, varchar, and text equivalents.

char(n) – any combination of up to 32,768 single-byte letters, symbols, and numbers. Specify the maximum size of the string with n. A char value can contain 0 characters, but n must be between 1 and 32,768. A multibyte string cannot exceed 32,768 bytes.
varchar(n) – any combination of up to 32,768 single-byte letters, symbols, and numbers. A varchar value can contain 0 characters if it is defined to allow null values, but n must be between 1 and 32,768.

The difference between char and varchar data is the way the values are stored in Adaptive Server databases. Replication Server treats them as equivalent types, but maintains the distinction so that the storage method is the same in primary and replicate databases.
text – variable-length character columns up to 2,147,483,647 bytes in length.

Replication Server 15.1 supports datatype conversion between large object (LOB) datatypes such as text, unitext, and image datatypes with text pointer and text, unitext, and image datatypes without text pointer.