Varying-length graphic strings

The types of varying-length graphic strings are VARGRAPHIC and double-byte character large object (DBCLOB). DBCLOB is a type of LOB. A DBCLOB column is useful for storing large amounts of double-byte character data, such as documents written with a single double-byte character set.

When varying-length graphic strings, distinct types, columns, and variables are defined, the maximum length is specified and this length becomes the length attribute. Actual values might have a smaller value. For a varying-length graphic string, the length attribute must between 1 and 16352.

For a varying-length graphic string column, the maximum for the length attribute is determined by the record size associated with the table, as described Maximum record size in the description of the CREATE TABLE statement. For a DBCLOB string, the length attribute must be between 1 and 1 073 741 823 inclusive. In UTF-16, although supplementary characters use two 2-byte code points, supplementary characters are still considered double-byte characters. For more information about DBCLOBs, see Large objects (LOBs).