char and varchar question

[Archibald Zimonyi]

Hello,

I'm trying to find a datatype that can contain more then 255 chars.
So far in MySql I've only found the char and varchar datatypes that can
contain any larger amount of text. My problem is that I might add whole
essays into a field.

Another problem is that it should follow the ANSI-SQL standard so I'm
working on a number of other databases as well. Can anyone give me an
idea on what to do?

Archie