1. A character string is a series of alphanumeric characters. The maximum length of a character string is 254 characters.
2. Each character string has a code attribute (ASCII, EBCDIC, or BYTE). It defines the sort sequence to be used when comparing the values of this column.
3. All character strings with the same code attribute can be compared to each other. Character strings with the different code attributes ASCII and EBCDIC can be compared to each other. Character strings with the code attributes ASCII and EBCDIC can be compared to date values.