American National Standards Institute SQL standard types supported in Exasol for characters: CHAR and VARCHAR.There are two ANSI American National Standards Institute SQL standard types supported in Exasol for characters: CHAR and VARCHAR.
The CHAR(n) data type has a fixed and pre-defined length n. When you insert a shorter value than the pre-defined length, then spacing characters (padding) are used to fill the space. The length is limited to 2000 characters and you can use ASCII or UTF-8 (Unicode) to define the character set.
VARCHAR(n) can contain any string of the length n or smaller. These strings are stored in their respective length. The maximum allowed length is 2,000,000 characters and you can use ASCII or UTF-8 (Unicode) to define the character set.
If no character set is defined in both CHAR(n) and VARCHAR(n), by default UTF-8 will be considered.
| Exasol Type (ANSI type) | Character Set | Note |
|---|---|---|
| CHAR(n) | ASCII, UTF-8 |
1 ≤ n ≤ 2,000 (default = 8) |
| VARCHAR(n) | ASCII, UTF-8 |
1 ≤ n ≤ 2,000,000 (default = 128) |