docs:data_type:character

About

This page is about the character ANSI data type.

Tabulify supports all standard ANSI SQL character data type:

SQL Standard Name	Alias	Default n	Description
character varying(n)	varchar(n)	max	variable-length with limit
national character varying(n)	nvarchar(n)	max	variable-length with limit encoded with the Unicode character set
character(n)	char(n)	1	fixed-length, blank-padded
national character(n)	nchar(n)	1	fixed-length, blank-padded encoded with the Unicode character set
long character varying	long varchar	-	varchar without length qualifier
long national character varying	long nvarchar	-	nvarchar without length qualifier
clob		-	variable unlimited length (generally stored outside the database block in a text file)

Note:

(n) means they can store strings up to n characters (not bytes) in length.
- with multibyte character encodings the number of characters and bytes can be quite different.
In most situations clob or character varying should be used instead of character. Why? Because character is the slowest because of its additional storage costs (ie blank padded)

By default, when creating a data resource, if no precision n (ie data type length) is given, we:

don't specify it if the precision is optional (for instance, SQL Server)
otherwise if the precision is mandatory (for instance, MySQL), we use:
- if set, the default tabulify connection value (see below)
- if not set, the maximum allowed by the database for the type

You can set the default tabulify value with the following connection attribute:

With this attribute you can set the default varchar precision.

Note:

The default varchar precision is the maximum value supported by the database with the exception of MySQL that makes it difficult to use this rule.
You may want to set it for SQLServer so that the max specifier is not used

This attribute sets the default precision (ie data type length) of nvarchar when not specified

This attribute sets the default precision (ie data type length) of char when not specified

This attribute sets the default precision (ie data type length) of nchar when not specified