SAP® Adaptive Server® Enterprise provides several system datatypes and the user-defined
datatypes timestamp, sysname, and
longsysname, which specify the type, size, and storage format of columns,
stored procedure parameters, and local variables.
Datatype Categories
SAP ASE provides several system datatypes and the user-defined datatypes timestamp, sysname, and longsysname.
Range and Storage Size
The range of valid values and storage size differ with each system-supplied datatypes.
Datatypes of Columns, Variables, or Parameters
You must declare the datatype for a column, local variable, or parameter. The datatype can be any of the system-supplied datatypes, or any user-defined datatype in the database.
Datatypes of Mixed-Mode Expressions
When you perform concatenation or mixed-mode arithmetic on values with different datatypes, the SAP ASE server must determine the datatype, length, and precision of the result.
Datatype Conversions
Many conversions from one datatype to another are handled automatically by the SAP ASE server. These are called implicit conversions. Other conversions must be performed explicitly with the convert, hextointt, intttohex, hextobigint, bintostr, strtobin, and biginttohex functions.
Datatypes and Encrypted Columns
Some SAP ASE datatypes support encrypted columns, as well as the on-disk length of encrypted columns.
User-Defined Datatypes
User-defined datatypes are built from the system datatypes and from the sysname or longsysname user-defined datatypes.