The following table lists the formulas for calculating the field storage values (in bytes) for different data types.

Table 1. Formulas for calculating field storage
ABL Data type (SQL equivalent) Value Field storage in bytes
CHARACTER (VARCHAR) Character string 1 + number of characters,

excluding trailing blanks. If the number of characters is greater than 240, add 3 to the number of characters instead of 1.
DECIMAL (DECIMALor NUMERIC) Zero 1
Nonzero 2+(# significant digits + 1)/2
INTEGER (INTEGER) 1 to 127 1
128 to 32,511 2
32,512 to 8,323,071 3
8,323,072 to 2,147,483,647 4
INT64 (BIGINT) 1 to 127 1
128 to 32,511 2
32,512 to 8,323,071 3
8,323,072 to 2,147,483,647 4
2,147,483,648 to 545,460,846,591 5
545,460,846,592 to ~139,636,000,000,000 6
~139,636,000,000,000 to ~35,750,000,000,000,000 7
Greater than ~35,750,000,000,000,000 8
DATE (DATE) Date Same as INTEGER.

Dates are stored as an INTEGER representing the number of days since a base date, defined as the origin of the ABL DATE data type.

DATE-TIME Date and time DATE + 4
DATE-TIME-TZ Date, time, and time zone DATE + 8
LOGICAL (BIT) False 1
True 2