SQL in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

Sybase Adaptive Server Datatypes

Table A-1 compares the datatypes supported by Sybase Adaptive Server to those supported by Microsoft SQL Server. While there is significant overlap in the types offered, a few types differ in meaning or are missing on one of the platforms. Where differences in the types exist, they’ll be listed in the table. Types that are not listed within the table should be considered identical on both platforms.

Table A-1. Sybase Adaptive Server datatypes

Sybase adaptive server datatype	Microsoft SQL Server datatype	Notes
N/A	BIGINT	Usage of decimal(19,0) as an equivalent to BIGINT will allow storage of values within the same range.
BINARY	BINARY	Describes a fixed-length binary value up to 255 bytes in size. In contrast, Microsoft SQL Server can store 8,000 bytes.
CHAR(N )	CHAR(N)	Holds fixed-length character data up to the database’s page size in length.
DATETIME	DATETIME	Holds date and time data within the range of 1753-01-01 00:00:00 through 9999-12-31 23:59:59. The DATETIME type can store milliseconds with a granularity of 1/300 second.
NCHAR(N)	N/A	Holds fixed-length character strings in the national character set up to the database’s page size in length. In contrast, Microsoft SQL Server’s NCHAR datatype stores Unicode character strings.
N/A	NTEXT	Holds Unicode text passages up to 1,073,741,823 characters in length.
NVARACHAR(N)	N/A	Holds variable-length character strings in the national character ...