Fixed-length Binary Strings

Fixed-length binary data types (RAW, BINARY, and CHAR(x) FOR BIT DATA) are SQL data types with a driver-defined maximum length.

Host Variable Formats

OpenESQL
03 bin-field1      PIC X(5).
03 bin-field2      SQL TYPE IS BINARY(200).
  • SQL BINARY, VARBINARY and IMAGE data are represented in COBOL as PIC X (n) fields.
  • OpenESQL does not perform data conversion.
  • When data is fetched from the database, if the host-variable field is smaller than the amount of data fetched, the data is truncated and the SQLWARN1 field in the SQLCA data structure is set to W. If the host-variable field is larger than the amount of data, the field is padded with null (x"00") bytes.
  • Any of the following enable you to insert data into BINARY, VARBINARY or LONG-VARBINARY columns:
    • Use dynamic SQL statements
    • Compile your application with the ALLOWNULLCHAR directive
    • Use SQL TYPE host variables
  • If you use PIC X host variables, compile your application with the ALLOWNULLCHAR directive to prevent the truncation of transferred data to or from the host variable if a null (x"00") is encountered.
  • The bin-field2 format uses the BINARY SQL TYPE.
DB2 ECM
03 bin-field1      PIC X(5).
  • Use CHAR FOR BIT DATA to represent BINARY.
  • Use VARCHAR(n) FOR BIT DATA to represent VARBINARY.
  • Use LONG VARCHAR FOR BIT DATA to represent LONG-VARBINARY.
  • The IBM ODBC driver returns the BINARY, VARBINARY and LONG VARBINARY data types instead of the IBM equivalent.
  • The IMAGE data type can be represented by BLOB.
  • DB2 uses LOBs (Character Large Object, Binary Large Object or Graphical Large Object) to define very large columns (2 Gigabytes maximum). You can use static SQL with these data types.