List of Supported Data Types

Binary Data

Empress stores binary information readily. This data type allows you to store data values of any length or format, such as those used to represent voice or graphical data. Empress dynamically allocates space when storing binary data.

Character Data

With Empress, you may store character data in fixed-length fields using one of three ways:

• Store only printable characters and strip leading and trailing blanks from data you enter by using CHARACTER type 1
• Store only printable characters and preserve leading and trailing blanks from data you enter by using CHARACTER type 2
• Store any ASCII character except NULL by using CHARACTER type 3

Date Data

The DATE data type stores dates. There are nine date data formats:

Table 2-3: Empress DATE Data Type Formats

^* nn is defined by the Empress system variable MSDATELIMIT, the value of which is assigned by the user to indicate the preferred century for entering dates.

Decimal Data

Decimal numbers are stored as DECIMAL or DEC. You can specify the number of digits and decimal places you need for your data. You may store up to 38 digits.

Dollar Data

Dollar and currency are stored as DOLLAR. When using this function, you may store any amount up to 13 digits and use one of three different formats:

You can use an Empress variable to control the currency, cents, and the thousands' separator (i.e., DM1,000.00).

Floating Point Data

Floating point numbers are stored as:

• REAL
• FLOAT
• LONGFLOAT or DOUBLE PRECISION

With FLOAT, you can specify the number of decimal places. Use LONGFLOAT for very high precision.

Integer Data

Integer numeric values are stored as:

• TINYINT 8 bits
• SMALLINT 16 bits
• INTEGER 32 bits
• BIGINT 64 bits

MicroSecond Timestamp Data

The MICROTIMESTAMP data type stores TIME plus microseconds information. The nine different MICROTIMESTAMP styles are shown below:

National Language Support (NLS) Character Data

The NLSCHARACTER data type is essentially the same as the CHARACTER with the exception of characters being stored in 8-bit.

National Language Support LS) Text Da(Nta

The NLSTEXT data type is essentially the same as TEXT with the exception of characters being stored in 8-bit.

NULL or Missing Data

Missing data values are stored internally in a special form, and you may enter and recall these values by using the NULL keyword.

Text Data

The TEXT data type will store character data varying from several characters to many pages, using only as much storage as is needed for the data. This is an extremely powerful and flexible way of storing a wide variety of text passages, including descriptions, abstracts, comments, and word processor output.

Time Data

Time data is stored as TIME. To store time, you may use one of nine formats: