Stores text of varying length, capped at a declared maximum, for example VARCHAR(50); it is part of standard SQL.
Also called variable-length character data.
Read more: Microsoft Learn
In the Ultra Transcenders books
Each book explains VARCHAR in context, with comparison tables and the common traps.
Terms in this definition
- Standard deployment type
A Foundry deployment type billed per token that keeps processing of prompts and responses inside the Azure geography of the resource, meeting data residency needs at lower volumes.
- Serverless
Compute tier for single Azure SQL databases that scales automatically, pauses when idle and charges by the second. It is offered in General Purpose and Hyperscale, not Business Critical, and reserved capacity does not apply.
Related terms
- ANSI
The American National Standards Institute, which made SQL a standard in 1986, a year before ISO did. Its standard types, for example INT, DECIMAL and VARCHAR, explain why SQL looks much the same from one vendor to another, even though each has its own dialect.
- Data type
A rule limiting what a column may contain, for example INT for integers, DECIMAL for numbers with fractions or VARCHAR for text of varying length. Which types exist depends on the database product.
- Large value data types
The (max) types, meaning nvarchar(max), varchar(max) and varbinary(max), along with vector, json and the older image, text and ntext types. They are allowed as included columns but never as part of an index key.