Field_Length

Length of the column.

Supported By

All Drivers

Value

1 .. Maximum length for the type of the column

Associated Attribute

DF_FIELD_LENGTH (Integer)

Remarks

The driver will get the lengths defined at the server. If you want to define a different length in DataFlex from the length at the server, you should use this setting. It defines the length of the column (together with Field_Precision).

This keyword is normally used to make sure that two relating columns have the same length. This can be a problem when relating between tables on different back ends.

For example, DataFlex will report the length of a numeric field as a multiple of 2. SQL servers support lengths for numeric data that are not a multiple of 2. If you want to relate between an SQL numeric column of length 3 and a DataFlex field of length 4, you should set this property for that field to 4.

In the SQL Drivers this keyword can be used to enlarge the size of a text or binary column. SQL back ends often store text and binary information in large objects (CLOB or BLOB). For columns of such type you cannot specify a length, instead they can contain data up to a large value (typically 2 or 4 Gb). When connecting to a table that contains such a column the length of these columns will be reported as 16Kb by the SQL Drivers. It is obvious the column can hold much more data then that. You can increase the length you can use by setting the Field_Length keyword. This will result in a field buffer of the entered size being allocated in memory.

See Also

Column Keywords