A character large object (CLOB) is distinguished from a BLOB in that it contains only character data, has a code page associated with it, and when working with CLOB values offsets are always in terms of characters (since some characters might be multi-byte).

Similar to a BLOB field, a CLOB field is a database table or temp-table field that contains a CLOB locator, which points to the associated CLOB data stored in the database. You cannot manipulate CLOB data directly. Instead, you must copy a CLOB to a LONGCHAR to manipulate the character contents of a CLOB field in ABL. You display a CLOB field by copying it to a LONGCHAR, and displaying the LONGCHAR in a large editor. See Copy large objects for more information.