Specifying Long Character Field Attributes

Depending on your database environment, the maximum length of a long character field ranges from several thousand characters to 32,767 characters (64,000 bytes). Using a long character field instead of a regular character field enables more information to be added, and the user can insert a tab at runtime by pressing Ctrl+Tab.

The maximum Large Object (LOB) size allowed by PeopleTools is 50 MB.

Note:

For Db2 for z/OS, the maximum Large Object (LOB) size is approximately 32700 KB, depending on the page size (as determined by the Buffer Pool) and the internal Db2 lengths of the rest of the columns in the row.

Field or Control	Description
Maximum Length	To control the length of a long character field, enter the maximum number of bytes that you want the system to write to this field. If you do not specify a maximum length, or specify 0 (zero), you can enter an unlimited number of characters, depending on the capacity of your database system. When working with fields, be aware that your chosen database system limits the amount of data contained in a field. For Oracle the field size is truncated to 1333 characters. Consider this limitation when choosing to use fields of a Long Character data type. For Oracle: If the maximum length of a long field is less than 4001 bytes, the field can be stored more efficiently as a VARCHAR2(4000). To support the PeopleSoft Unicode implementation on the Oracle platform, we defined long columns with a specified length of 1330 or less as VARCHAR2 columns. If the length specified was greater than 1330, then the column was generated as a long VARCHAR or long raw, depending on the setting of the Raw Binary check box. This setting allows for the maximum possible usage of a tripled VARCHAR2 character length for Unicode-defined databases. For Db2 for z/OS: Character fields defined with a length specification greater than 254 are automatically defined as LONG VARCHAR in EBCDIC databases and LONG VARGRAPHIC in Unicode databases. Note: For all supported database platforms, it is more efficient to define a reasonable length for long character fields than to simply use 0. Specifying 0 forces PeopleTools to define LOBs automatically for those databases for which LOBs are supported. Due to potential performance implications, LOBs should not be used indiscriminately.
Raw Binary	Select to store data that is not converted when moving data between different systems. Raw binary is intended for binary data and byte strings. For example, raw binary can store graphics, sound, documents, and arrays of binary data.

Field or Control

Description

Maximum Length

To control the length of a long character field, enter the maximum number of bytes that you want the system to write to this field. If you do not specify a maximum length, or specify 0 (zero), you can enter an unlimited number of characters, depending on the capacity of your database system.

When working with fields, be aware that your chosen database system limits the amount of data contained in a field. For Oracle the field size is truncated to 1333 characters. Consider this limitation when choosing to use fields of a Long Character data type.

For Oracle: If the maximum length of a long field is less than 4001 bytes, the field can be stored more efficiently as a VARCHAR2(4000). To support the PeopleSoft Unicode implementation on the Oracle platform, we defined long columns with a specified length of 1330 or less as VARCHAR2 columns. If the length specified was greater than 1330, then the column was generated as a long VARCHAR or long raw, depending on the setting of the Raw Binary check box. This setting allows for the maximum possible usage of a tripled VARCHAR2 character length for Unicode-defined databases.

For Db2 for z/OS: Character fields defined with a length specification greater than 254 are automatically defined as LONG VARCHAR in EBCDIC databases and LONG VARGRAPHIC in Unicode databases.

Note: For all supported database platforms, it is more efficient to define a reasonable length for long character fields than to simply use 0. Specifying 0 forces PeopleTools to define LOBs automatically for those databases for which LOBs are supported. Due to potential performance implications, LOBs should not be used indiscriminately.

Raw Binary

Select to store data that is not converted when moving data between different systems. Raw binary is intended for binary data and byte strings. For example, raw binary can store graphics, sound, documents, and arrays of binary data.