Cloud

Bytea

The bytea data type stores arbitrary binary data as a sequence of bytes. Unlike text, bytea values are not UTF-8 validated and can contain any byte value. Redpanda SQL uses bytea to surface binary fields from external sources, including Iceberg tables, Protobuf and Avro topic schemas, and the raw key and value bytes of Redpanda Streaming records.

Syntax

variable_name BYTEA

Examples

Create a table with a bytea column and insert binary data using the hex literal form:

CREATE TABLE binary_data (
    id INT,
    payload BYTEA
);
INSERT INTO binary_data (id, payload)
VALUES (1, '\xDEADBEEF'),
       (2, '\x00FF');

Literal formats

You can write a bytea literal in either of two PostgreSQL-compatible forms:

Format Example Notes

Hex

'\xDEADBEEF'

\x prefix followed by an even number of hexadecimal digits. Case-insensitive.

Escape (octal)

'\336\255'

Each \ is followed by exactly three octal digits in the range 0-7. Use \\ for a literal backslash. Other characters are taken literally.

To cast a string literal to bytea explicitly, append ::bytea:

SELECT '\xDEADBEEF'::bytea;

Output format

When a bytea value is returned to a client over the text wire format, Redpanda SQL hex-encodes it with the \x prefix, regardless of which literal format was used as input:

SELECT '\336\255'::bytea;
+---------+
| bytea   |
+---------+
| \xdead  |
+---------+

Over the binary wire format, Redpanda SQL returns bytea values as raw bytes without transformation.

Supported operations

The bytea data type supports a narrow set of operations. Operations not listed are not supported.

Operation Example

Equality and inequality

payload = '\xDEADBEEF'::bytea, payload <> '\x00'::bytea

Cast from a string literal

'\xDEADBEEF'::bytea

length(payload)

Returns the byte count as int. Distinct from length(text), which returns the codepoint count.

octet_length(payload)

Returns the byte count as int. Equivalent to length() on a bytea value.

Read bytea from external sources

Redpanda SQL maps binary fields from external sources to bytea automatically:

Source Maps to bytea

Iceberg

Columns of type BinaryType or FixedType.

Protobuf (topic schemas)

Fields declared as bytes.

Avro (topic schemas)

Fields declared as bytes or fixed.

Record metadata

redpanda.key, redpanda.headers[].value, and the raw key and value bytes exposed through redpanda_raw.

For more on querying a topic alongside its Iceberg-translated history, see Query Iceberg-enabled Topics.