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> Mirror of <https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/data/data-cloud-query-guide/references/dc-sql-reference/string.html> (Salesforce, Data 360 Query Guide), read 2026-10-23. Salesforce's own page is the authority; this copy exists because that site refuses non-browser readers.

## String Types

**Applies to:** ✅ Data 360 SQL ✅ Tableau Hyper API

Data 360 SQL supports three string types.

| Name | Description |
| --- | --- |
| `text` | A string of variable length |
| `character varying(n)`, `varchar(n)` | A string with a limited variable length |
| `character(n)`, `char(n)` | A string with a fixed length. Padding is added if the string doesn’t fill the fixed length. |

The `text` type stores strings of any length up to 2 GB.

SQL defines two primary character types: `character varying(n)` and `character(n)`, where `n` is a positive integer. Both of these types can store strings up to `n` characters in length. An attempt to store a longer string results in only the first `n` characters being stored. If the string to be stored is shorter than the declared length, values of the type `character` are padded. Character type `character varying` stores shorter string without padding.

If you don’t provide a length specifier, `character` is equivalent to `character(1) and character varying` accepts strings with a length of up to 2 GB.

Data 360 SQL internally stores all string ‌as UTF-8, and there are no character set considerations.

The table `test1` is defined as:

| a |
| --- |
| ok |
| good |
| just perfect |

Results:

| a | char_length |
| --- | --- |
| ok | 2 |
| good | 4 |
| just perfect | 12 |

The table `test1` has one column with values defined as `character(4)`:

| a |
| --- |
| ok |

Output:

| a | char_length |
| --- | --- |
| ok | 2 |

The table `test1` has one column with values defined as `varchar(5)`:

| b |
| --- |
| ’ok' |
| 'good ' |
| 'too long’ |

Output:

| b | char_length |
| --- | --- |
| ok | 2 |
| good | 5 |
| too l | 5 |


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