RE: Max length of a VARYING field

<snip>
Scott, and everyone, don't worry. Compatibility would not be broken.
We don't even break compatibility for things like CCSID(*CHAR:*JOBRUN)
where the default behaviour is clearly wrong; we certainly wouldn't
break compatibility for something like this.

Any definitions that simply have the VARYING keyword would continue to
have a 2 byte prefix and get a compile-time diagnostic if the length is
too long. And conversely, a varying definition of any size could be
explicitly defined to have a 4 byte prefix.

It will probably be like this, allowing you to be explicit about the 2
byte prefix if you want.
VARYING(2)
VARYING(4)
VARYING (another way to specify "VARYING(2)")
</snip>

Barbara,

Maybe it's just because I've been dealing with Oracle DB crap lately but
having VARYING(x) seems a little bit too much like you're setting the
max length of the field to either 2 or 4 (sort of like defining a CHAR
or VARCHAR field in SQL). I think someone else mentioned using something
like either BIGVARYING or LONGVARYING which I personally find clearer.

Matt