FrontBase Documentation

Backtrack:   Welcome!     5. SQL 92       5.3. FrontBase Datatypes

Updated: 20-Nov-2000 prev — next Table of Contents

5.3.2. SQL3 Datatypes

FrontBase implements the following datatypes from SQL3:

BLOB, CLOB, BOOLEAN

Each type is explained below with an example of defining a column of the type.

 

BLOB

A Binary Large OBject is an opaque binary datatype. The bytes you store are not interpreted in any way and are returned in the same form as when inserted. FrontBase implements BLOBs very efficiently, including streaming on the server side so there is no unnecessary copying. Client side streaming is planned for a future version of FrontBase.

A BLOB value can be up to 2 GB in size.

Example:

CREATE TABLE T0(C0 BLOB, ...);

CLOB

A Character Large OBject is a datatype for very large character strings. Usually, these are strings that you don't want to search and for which you desire increased efficiency compared to CHARACTER/VARCHAR values. Like BLOBs, CLOBs are streamed on the server side so there is no unnecessary copying.

CLOB values are encoded in the UTF8 format with encoding and decoding occuring on the client side.

Example:

CREATE TABLE T0(C0 CLOB, ...);

BOOLEAN

Implemented as an unsigned byte. Please note that SQL 92 uses three-valued logic. The possible values for BOOLEAN are FALSE (0), TRUE (1), and UNKNOWN (255).

Example:

CREATE TABLE T0(C0 BOOLEAN, ...);

If you have feedback or questions on this document, please send e-mail to doc-feedback@frontbase.com. Please reference the section number and topic. Thanks!!

©2000 FrontBase, Inc. All rights reserved.