Oracle Rdb has supported multiple segment LIST OF BYTE VARYING data types for user-defined data. However in previous versions, Oracle Rdb maintained its own LIST OF BYTE VARYING metadata columns as single segments. This restricted the length to approximately 65530 bytes. An SQL CREATE TRIGGER or CREATE MODULE statement could fail due to this restriction. This limit was lifted by changing the way Oracle Rdb stores its own metadata. o For columns containing binary data, such as the binary representation of query, routine, constraint, trigger action, computed by column, or query outline, Oracle Rdb breaks the data into pieces that best fit the system storage area page size. Thus, the segments are all the same size with a possible small trailing segment. The LIST OF BYTE VARYING column value is no longer fragmented, improving performance when reading system metadata. o For columns containing text data such as the SQL source (for elements such as triggers and views) and user-supplied comment strings, Oracle Rdb breaks the text at line boundaries (indicated by ASCII carriage returns and line feeds) and stores the text without the line separator. Thus, the segments are of varying size with a possible zero length for blank lines. An application can now easily display the LIST OF BYTE VARYING column value and the application no longer needs to break up the single text segment for printing. No change is made to the LIST OF BYTE VARYING column values when a database is converted (using the RMU Convert command, RMU Restore command, or SQL EXPORT/IMPORT statements) from a previous version. Applications that read the Oracle Rdb system LIST OF BYTE VARYING column values must be changed to understand multiple segments. Applications that do not read these system column values should see no change to previous behavior. Tools such as the RMU Extract command and the SQL SHOW and EXPORT statements handle both the old and new formats of the system metadata.