Usage for Binary Data Types

Binary data begins with the characters “0x” or “0X” and can include any combination of digits and the uppercase and lowercase letters A through F.

You can specify the column length in bytes, or use the default length of 1 byte. Each byte stores 2 hexadecimal digits. Even though the default length is 1 byte, Sybase recommends that you always specify an even number of characters for BINARY and VARBINARY column length. If you enter a value longer than the specified column length, Sybase IQ truncates the entry to the specified length without warning or error.

Binary Data Type
Binary Data Type	Description
BINARY	Binary data of length `length` bytes. If `length` is omitted, the default is 1 byte. The maximum size allowed is 32767 bytes. Use the fixed-length binary type `BINARY` for data in which all entries are expected to be approximately equal in length. Because entries in `BINARY` columns are zero-padded to the column length `length`, they might require more storage space than entries in `VARBINARY` columns.
VARBINARY	Binary data up to a length of `max-length` bytes. If `max-length` is omitted, the default is 1 byte. The maximum size allowed is (32K – 1) bytes. Use the variable-length binary type `VARBINARY` for data that is expected to vary greatly in length.
UNIQUEIDENTIFIER	The `UNIQUEIDENTIFIER` data type is used for storage of UUID (also known as GUID) values.

Treatment of Trailing Zeros
All BINARY columns are padded with zeros to the full width of the column. Trailing zeros are truncated in all VARBINARY columns.
ASCII Data From a Flat File
Any ASCII data loaded from a flat file into a binary type column (BINARY or VARBINARY) is stored as nibbles.
Storage Size
Familiarize yourself with the storage size of binary data.
String Operators
The concatenation string operators || and + both support binary type data.
Restrictions on BINARY and VARBINARY Data
Restrictions apply to columns containing BINARY and VARBINARY data.
Binary Data Compatibility
The treatment of trailing zeros in binary data differs between Sybase IQ, SQL Anywhere, and Adaptive Server Enterprise.
UNIQUEIDENTIFIER
The UNIQUEIDENTIFIER data type is used for storage of UUID (also known as GUID) values.
Standards and compatibility for UNIQUEIDENTIFIER
These standards and compatibilities apply to UNIQUEIDENTIFIER values.
Binary Large Object Data
As a separately licensed option, Sybase IQ supports binary large object (BLOB) data with a length ranging from zero (0) to 512TB (terabytes) for an IQ page size of 128KB or 2PB (petabytes) for an IQ page size of 512KB.

Parent topic: Binary Data Types