The maximum length of an SQL error message is 255 bytes. Because UTF16 has two bytes per character, the maximum length of an SQL error message is 127 characters.
For example, message number 5468 in UTF8 appears like this in BTEQ:
BTEQ -- Enter your DBC/SQL request or BTEQ command: DELETE USER tn2; *** Failure 5468 Cannot delete database because either this database has a join or hash index in it or one of its tables has a join or hash index defined on it.
In UTF16, the message text is truncated:
BTEQ -- Enter your DBC/SQL request or BTEQ command: DELETE USER tn2; *** Failure 5468 Cannot delete database because either this database has a join or hash index in it or one of its tables has a join or hash index.