Support for the BLOB (binary large object) and the CLOB (character large object) data types is now available in SAS/ACCESS Interface to DB2 (SAS^® 9.1.3 SP4).

The BLOB data type contains varying-length binary string data with a length of up to 2 gigabytes. It can hold structured data that user-defined types and functions can exploit. As is the case for FOR BIT DATA character strings, BLOB strings are not associated with a code page.

The CLOB data type contains varying-length character string data with a length of up to 2 gigabytes. It can store a large single-byte character set (SBCS) or a mixed (SBCS and multi-byte character set, or MBCS) character-based data, such as documents written with a single character set. Therefore, the CLOB data type has an SBCS or mixed code page associated with it.

You can use SAS/ACCESS Interface to DB2 to read, insert, and update both of these data types.

The CLOB default is $1024. To control the length and obtain larger character fields, the DBMAX_TEXT option allows you to do this. However, you are still limited to the SAS limit for character columns, which is 32767.

The following table lists the data type and the default SAS format for BLOB and CLOB:

DB2 Data Type 	SAS Data Type	Default SAS Format
-------------   -------------   ------------------
BLOB	         character	  $HEXn.
CLOB	         character	  $n.

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