Question

How can one dump/ examine the exact content of a database column?

Answer 1

    SELECT DUMP(col1)
    FROM tab1
    WHERE cond1 = val1;

    DUMP(COL1)
    -------------------------------------
    Typ=96 Len=4: 65,66,67,32

For this example the type is 96, indicating CHAR, and the last byte in the column is 32, which is the ASCII code for a space. This tells us that this column is blank-padded.