Storage Formats of Data Types

The following table lists storage formats for SQL data types:

Data Type	Description	Range
char	character	A string of 1 to maximum configured row size but not exceeding 32,000
c	character	A string of 1 to maximum configured row size but not exceeding 32,000.
varchar	character	A string of 1 to maximum configured row size but not exceeding 32,000.
long varchar	character	A string of 1 to 2 GB characters.
text	character	A string of 1 to maximum configured row size but not exceeding 32,000.
nchar	Unicode	A string of 1 to maximum configured row size, but not exceeding 16,000 characters (32,000 bytes).
nvarchar	Unicode	A string of 1 to maximum configured row size, but not exceeding 16,000 characters (32,000 bytes).
long nvarchar	Unicode	A string of 1 to a maximum of 1 GB Unicode characters (that is, 2 bytes to a maximum of 2 GB bytes in length).
tinyint	1-byte integer	-128 to +127
smallint	2-byte integer	-32,768 to +32,767
integer	4-byte integer	-2,147,483,648 to +2,147,483,647.
bigint	8-byte integer	-9,223,372,036,854,775,808 to +9,223,372,036,854,775,807
decimal	fixed-point exact numeric	Depends on precision and scale. Default is (5,0): -99999 to +99999. Maximum number of digits is 31.
float4	4-byte floating	-1.0e+38 to +1.0e+38 (7 digit precision).
float	8-byte floating	-1.0e+38 to +1.0e+38
date	4-byte binary	0001-01-01 to 9999-12-31
time	10-byte binary	00:00:00 to 24:00:00
timestamp	14-byte binary	0001-01-01 00:00:00 to 9999-12-31 24:00:00
interval year to month	3-byte binary	-9999-0 to 9999-11
interval day to second	12-byte binary	-3652047 00:00:00 to 3652047 23:59:59
ingresdate	ingresdate (12 bytes)	1-jan-0001 to 30-dec-9999 (for absolute dates) and -9999 years to +9999 years (for time intervals).
money	money (8 bytes)	$-999,999,999,999.99 to $999,999,999,999.99.
table_key	logical key	No range: stored as 8 bytes.
object_key	logical key	No range: stored as 16 bytes.
byte	binary	Fixed length binary data, 1 to maximum configured row size.
byte varying	binary	Variable length binary data, 1 to maximum configured row size.
long byte	binary	1 to 2 GB of binary data.

Nullable columns require one additional byte to store a null indicator.

Note: If your hardware supports the IEEE standard for floating point numbers, the float type is accurate to 14 decimal precision (-dddddddddddd.dd to +dddddddddddd.dd) and ranges from -10**308 to +10**308. The money type is accurate to 14 decimal precision with or without IEEE support.