## Data Type

The SQL syntax elements for Oracle Version 7 and MaxDB in SQL mode ORACLE differ, among other things, in the definition of data types.

· In contrast to Oracle, columns with the data type CHAR[ACTER] are only stored up to a length of 30 characters with fixed length in MaxDB.

· The Oracle data type VARCHAR2 does not differ from VARCHAR in MaxDB.

· The data types INT[EGER] and SMALLINT have 20 significant digits in MaxDB.

· In MaxDB, the data type FLOAT is always represented with 20 significant digits.

· In MaxDB, data types cannot be defined for numbers with a negative scale. It is not possible to specify a scale that is greater than the number of significant digits.

· In MaxDB, numbers are not implicitly converted into date values or vice versa.

· In Oracle, date values run from 1/1/4712 BC to 12/31/9999 AD.
In MaxDB, date values run from 1/1/0001 to 12/31/9999.

· MaxDB does not support the comparison of character strings denoted as "non padded comparison" in Oracle.

· The data types NCHAR, NVARCHAR2, MLSLABEL, BLOB, CLOB, NCLOB, BFILE, and UROWID, which are supported by Oracle, are not supported by MaxDB.