>Not quite it. I want to pad with nothing. It seems that the other guy (working in powerbuilder and sybase's SQL anywhere) is kinda working with SET ANSI ON -- that is to say, "CERT " # "CERT" so I need to only write the first four characters... I think its an ODBC setting or something, at least I hope there is something like that.

Can you not trim the field in the insert validation and put a NULL at the end??