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sqlmariadbvarbinaryvarbinarymax

What does VARBINARY(MAX) mean?


I'm trying to port a MSSQL database over to MariaDB and I've encountered a table creation using varbinary(max):

    `definition` VARBINARY(max) NULL DEFAULT NULL

What would this actually do and is there an equivalent type definition in MariaDB that I could use?


Solution

  • As others have stated in the comments, VARBINARY(max) in MSSQL refers to:

    Variable-length binary data.

    max indicates that the maximum storage size is 2^31-1 bytes.

    From what I found in MariaDB's documentation, the only way of getting a similar storage size in MariaDB is to use the LONGBLOB data type:

    LONGBLOB

    A BLOB column with a maximum length of 4,294,967,295 bytes or 4GB (2^32 - 1).

    Useful links:

    https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us//library/ms188362.aspx

    http://www.techonthenet.com/mariadb/datatypes.php