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Data types and subtypes

BIGINT data type

Added in: 1.5

Description

BIGINT is the SQL99-compliant 64-bit signed integer type. It is available in Dialect 3 only.

BIGINT numbers range from -263 .. 263-1, or -9,223,372,036,854,775,808 .. 9,223,372,036,854,775,807.

Example 

create table WholeLottaRecords (
  id bigint not null primary key,
  description varchar(32)
)

See also:

BIGINT

BLOB data type

Changed in: 2.0

Description

Several enhancements have been implemented for text BLOBs:

  • DML COLLATE clauses are now supported.
  • Equality comparisons can be performed on the full BLOB contents.
  • Character set conversions are possible when assigning a BLOB to a BLOB or a string to a BLOB.

When defining binary BLOBs, the mnemonic binary can now be used instead of the integer 0.

Examples 

select NameBlob from MyTable
  where NameBlob collate pt_br = 'João'

create table MyPictures (
  id int not null primary key,
  title varchar(40),
  description varchar(200),
  picture blob sub_type binary

See also:

BLOB

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New character sets

Added in: 1.0, 1.5, 2.0

The following table lists the character sets added in Firebird.

Table 4.1. Character sets new in Firebird

Name Max bytes/ch. Languages Added in
DOS737 1 Greek 1.5
DOS775 1 Baltic 1.5
DOS858 1 = DOS850 plus € sign 1.5
DOS862 1 Hebrew 1.5
DOS864 1 Arabic 1.5
DOS866 1 Russian 1.5
DOS869 1 Modern Greek 1.5
ISO8859_2 1 Latin-2, Central European 1.0
ISO8859_3 1 Latin-3, Southern European 1.5
ISO8859_4 1 Latin-4, Northern European 1.5
ISO8859_5 1 Cyrillic 1.5
ISO8859_6 1 Arabic 1.5
ISO8859_7 1 Greek 1.5
ISO8859_8 1 Hebrew 1.5
ISO8859_9 1 Latin-5, Turkish 1.5
ISO8859_13 1 Latin-7, Baltic Rim 1.5
KOI8R 1 Russian 2.0
KOI8U 1 Ukrainian 2.0
UTF8(*) 4 All 2.0
WIN1255 1 Hebrew 1.5
WIN1256 1 Arabic 1.5
WIN1257 1 Baltic 1.5
WIN1258 1 Vietnamese 2.0

(*) In Firebird 1.5, UTF8 is an alias for UNICODE_FSS. This character set has some inherent problems. In Firebird 2, UTF8 is a character set in its own right, without the drawbacks of UNICODE_FSS.

See also:

Character sets SET NAMES Default character set Firebird 2.0 Language Reference Update: Character set NONE Firebird 2.1 Release Notes: International language support (INTL) Character sets and Unicode in Firebird Convert your Firebird applications to Unicode

Character set NONE handling changed

Changed in: 1.5.1

Description

Firebird 1.5.1 has improved the way character set NONE data are moved to and from fields or variables with another character set, resulting in fewer transliteration errors. For more details, see the Note at the end of the book.

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New collations

Added in: 1.0, 1.5, 1.5.1, 2.0

The following table lists the collations added in Firebird. The Details column is based on what has been reported in the Release Notes and other documents. The information in this column is probably incomplete; some collations with an empty Details field may still be case insensitive (ci), accent insensitive (ai) or dictionary-sorted (dic).

Table 4.2. Collations new in Firebird

Character set Collation Language Details Added in
ISO8859_1 ES_ES_CI_AI Spanish ci, ai 2.0
PT_BR Brazilian Portuguese ci, ai 2.0
ISO8859_2 CS_CZ Czech 1.0
ISO_HUN Hungarian 1.5
ISO_PLK Polish 2.0
ISO8859_13 LT_LT Lithuanian 1.5.1
UTF8 UCS_BASIC All 2.0
UNICODE All dic 2.0
WIN1250 BS_BA Bosnian 2.0
PXW_HUN Hungarian ci 1.0
WIN_CZ Czech ci 2.0
WIN_CZ_CI_AI Czech ci, ai 2.0
WIN1251 WIN1251_UA Ukrainian and Russian 1.5
WIN1252 WIN_PTBR Brazilian Portuguese ci, ai 2.0
WIN1257 WIN1257_EE Estonian dic 2.0
WIN1257_LT Lithuanian dic 2.0
WIN1257_LV Latvian dic 2.0
KOI8R KOI8R_RU Russian dic 2.0
KOI8U KOI8U_UA Ukrainian dic 2.0

A note on the UTF8 collations:

The UCS_BASIC collation sorts in Unicode code-point order: A, B, a, b, á… This is exactly the same as UTF8 with no collation specified. UCS_BASIC was added to comply with the SQL standard.

The UNICODE collation sorts using UCA (Unicode Collation Algorithm): a, A, á, b, B…