Structure of the System Catalog
In case-sensitive databases that use the default database locale (U. S. English, ISO 8859-1 code set), character columns in these tables are CHAR and VARCHAR data types. For all other locales, character columns are the NLS data types, NCHAR and NVARCHAR. For information about differences in the collation order of character data types, see the HCL OneDB GLS User's Guide. See also theData types chapter of this publication.
Character columns in databases that are not case-sensitive
| Table_name.Column_name | Data type |
|---|---|
| sysams.am_sptype | CHAR(3) |
| syscolauth.colauth | CHAR(3) |
| sysdefaults.class | CHAR(1) |
| sysfragauth.fragauth | CHAR(6) |
| sysinherits.class | CHAR(1) |
| syslangauth.langauth | CHAR(1) |
| sysprocauth.procauth | CHAR(1) |
| sysprocedures.mode | CHAR(1) |
| systabauth.tabauth | CHAR(9) |
| systriggers.event | CHAR(1) |
| sysxtdtypeauth.auth | CHAR(2) |
In each of these columns, case-sensitive encoding can record information that utilities of the database server require in queries on those system catalog tables. In a database that is case-insensitive, queries might return incorrect results from data stored in NCHAR or NVARCHAR columns, if different attributes of database objects are encoded as different cases of the same letter. To avoid the loss of information, CHAR data types are used for the system catalog columns listed above.