The LVARCHAR data type

IBM® Informix® supports the LVARCHAR type as a "large" VARCHAR type. The LVARCHAR type was introduced to bypass the 255 bytes size limitation of the standard VARCHAR type. Starting with IDS version 9.4, the LVARCHAR size limit is 32739 bytes. In older versions the limit was 2048 bytes.

Genero BDL does not support the LVARCHAR type natively, but it has the VARCHAR type which can hold up to 65535 bytes. IBM Informix LVARCHAR values can be inserted or fetched by using the BDL VARCHAR type.

Static SQL statements such as CREATE TABLE can include the LVARCHAR column type.

When extracting a schema with fgldbsch, LVARCHAR(N) columns will by default be converted to VARCHAR2(N) in the schema file. VARCHAR2 is a Genero BDL-only pseudo type identified with the type code 201 that allows for VARCHAR variables with a size that can be greater than 255 bytes to be defined.