Unicode data types support the coercion of local character data to Unicode data, and of Unicode data to local character data. Coercion function parameters are valid Character data types (for example, char, c, varchar and long varchar) and valid Unicode data types (nchar, nvarchar, and long nvarchar.)

The maximum row length is dependent on the Ingres page size and server configuration, and can be configured to a maximum of 32,767 bytes. For further discussion of page and row size configuration, see the Database Administrator Guide. The maximum length of a character column is limited by the maximum row width configured but not exceeding 32,000. Long nvarchar columns are an exception, with a maximum length of 2 GB.