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Workflow database field size limitations

The workflow database software sets limits on the amount of data you can store in a workflow field. These limits are both specific to a field and cumulative for a record.

The following table describes the limitations set by specific versions of Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle.

  MS SQL 2000 Oracle 9i
Bytes* per field of
data type string

8000 (data type varchar)

NOTE SQL Server does not return an error if you try to insert more data than the defined number of bytes into a column (field). Rather, it simply truncates the data to the defined length.

4000 (data type varchar2)

NOTE Oracle returns an error if you try to insert more data into a column than its defined data size. No data is inserted into the column (field).

Bytes of data per database row (record)

8060

NOTE SQL Server allows you to define 1024 string columns (fields) at 8000 characters each. If you were to do this, however, you could not fill every column to the maximum, since the total amount of data SQL Server supports in a row (all columns combined) is 8060 bytes. SQL Server returns an error if you try to insert (or update) a row with more data than the supported maximum row size.

No defined limit

NOTE Since Oracle does not have a limit on the size of the row you could conceivably define a maximum of 1000 columns, with 4000 bytes of data in each.

Maximum number of columns per database table†
1024
1000
Maximum size of a BLOB†† (binary large object)

64K

512K

* Bytes do not necessarily equal characters. If you use a multi-byte character set, the maximum number of characters you can insert into a column is less than the maximum bytes supported. The maximum number of characters is then determined by the bytes per character.

†This includes the required Process Engine system fields for each roster, queue, and event log.

†† For BLOB columns, the data is not stored in the row itself—rather it is stored in another area of the database. Only the address to the data is stored in the row. The address does not significantly impact the maximum amount of actual data which can be stored in a row. Therefore, unexposed data fields can be larger in size (and total row size) than the limits appear to suggest.