Supported SQL Server datatypes

The XML datatype is a built-in datatype in SQL Server 2005 that enables you to store XML documents and fragments in a SQL Server database. The XML datatype maps to the PowerScript String datatype. You can use this datatype as a column type when you create a table, as a variable, parameter, or function return type, and with CAST and CONVERT functions.

In SQL Server 2005, the VarChar(max), NVarChar(max), and VarBinary(max) datatypes store very large values (up to 2^31 bytes). The VarChar(max) and NVarChar(max) datatypes map to the PowerScript String datatype and the VarBinary(max) datatype maps to the PowerScript Blob datatype. You can use these datatypes to obtain metadata, define new columns, and query data from the columns. You can also use them to pipeline data.

For large data values of datatypes Text, NText, Image, Varchar(max), NVarchar(max), VarBinary(max), and XML, the SNC interface supports reading data directly from the database using an embedded SQL statement.

Example 1:

select image_col into :blob_var from mytable where key_col = 1;

Example 2:

declare cur cursor for select id, image_col from mytable;
open cur;
fetch cur into :id_var, :blob_var;

If the result set contains a large datatype of type Text or Varchar(max), using ANSI encoding, you must set a maximum size for each large value using the PBMaxBlobSize database parameter. For other large datatypes, there is no limitation on the size of the data. The SNC interface retrieves all the data from the database if there is sufficient memory.

The SNC interface supports inserting and updating values of large datatypes using embedded SQL INSERT and UPDATE statements. You must set the DisableBind database parameter to 0 to enable the SNC interface to bind large data values. For example:

Insert into mytable (id, blob_col) values(1, :blob_var);

Update mytable set blob_col = :blob_var where id = 1;