Different DB clients and DB servers deliver different metadata when PowerBuilder IDE or your app investigates a SELECT statement.

You can simulate what the IDE does this way:

1. Put your DataWindow SELECT statement including retrieval arguments into a string variable.
2. Investigate that string using DYNAMIC SQL Format 4
   1. PREPARE USING SQLSA
   2. DESCRIBE USING SQLDA
3. Look at all the "description" metadata available via SQLDA

That metadata is what the DataWindow engine of PowerBuilder uses to build its DataWindow buffer.

You will see that your PostgreSQL delivers different metadata than SQL Server.

HTH /Michael

instead of doing

Select '' as codem,

try doing : 

Select RPAD('', 10, ' ') as code,

See if that makes a difference.

What I don't understand is that you'd get char(255) for "version".

Maybe try with :

... LPAD('1', 3, '0') as version

 NOTE: you've written "codeM" and "code" for the first column. I don't know if it confuses powerbuilder to use 2 different names for the same column of the UNION?

Hi,
Just like Markus I often use CAST of either constant value or NULL to specific datatype.

// No control over datatypes
SELECT NULL          as "ArtworkID"
     , 'Jim Sanborn' as "Artist"
     , '03-Nov-1990' as "UnveiledDate"
     , '38 57 6.5 N' as "Latitude"
     , '77 8 44 W'   as "Longitude"
     , NULL          as "Content"

// Explicit control of every datatype
SELECT cast(NULL          as nvarchar(255)) as "ArtworkID"
     , cast('Jim Sanborn' as nvarchar(255)) as "Artist"
     , cast('03-Nov-1990' as date)          as "UnveiledDate"
     , cast('38 57 6.5 N' as varchar(40))   as "Latitude"
     , cast('77 8 44 W'   as varchar(40))   as "Longitude"
     , cast(NULL          as nvarchar(max)) as "Content"

Your SQL dialect may differ but same principle applies.

HTH /Michael