Datatype categories

Adaptive Server provides several system datatypes and the user-defined datatypes timestamp, sysname, and longsysname. Table 1-1 lists the categories of Adaptive Server datatypes. Each category is described in a section of this chapter.

Table 1-1: Datatype categories

Category

Used for

Exact numeric datatypes

Numeric values (both integers and numbers with a decimal portion) that must be represented exactly

Approximate numeric datatypes

Numeric data that can tolerate rounding during arithmetic operations

Money datatypes

Monetary data

Timestamp datatype

Tables that are browsed in Client-Library™ applications

Date and time datatypes

Date and time information

Character datatypes

Strings consisting of letters, numbers, and symbols

Binary datatypes

Raw binary data, such as pictures, in a hexadecimal-like notation

bit datatype

True/false and yes/no type data

sysname and longsysname datatypes

System tables

text, image, and unitext datatypes

Printable characters or hexadecimal-like data that requires more than the maximum column size provided by your server’s logical page size.

Abstract datatypes

Adaptive Server supports abstract datatypes through Java classes. See Java in Adaptive Server Enterprise for more information.

User-defined datatypes

Defining objects that inherit the rules, default, null type, IDENTITY property, and base datatype of the datatypes listed in this table. text undergoes character-set conversion if client is using a different character set, image does not.