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Built-in Data Types

The compiler supports the following SQL data types:

Name Description Aliases
BOOLEAN A boolean value BOOL
TINYINT 8-bit signed integer using two's complement.
SMALLINT 16-bit signed integer using two's complement. INT2
INTEGER 32-bit signed integer using two's complement. INT, SIGNED, INT4
BIGINT 64-bit signed integer using two's complement. INT8, INT64
DECIMAL(precision, scale) A high precision fixed-point type, with a precision (total number of decimal digits) and a scale (number of decimal digits after period). DEC, NUMERIC, NUMBER
REAL IEEE 32-bit floating point number FLOAT4, FLOAT32
DOUBLE IEEE 64-bit floating point number FLOAT8, FLOAT64
VARCHAR(n) A string value with maximum fixed width. Trailing spaces are removed when converting a value to this type. CHARACTER VARYING(n)
CHAR(n) A string value with a fixed width. Values are truncated if longer, or padded with spaces if shorter, to be brought to the specified size. CHARACTER(n)
VARCHAR A string of unlimited length. Trailing spaces are removed when converting a CHAR(n) value to this type. STRING, TEXT
BINARY(n) A byte string with a fixed width.
VARBINARY A byte string with an unlimited width. BYTEA
NULL A type comprising only the NULL value.
INTERVAL A SQL interval. Two types of intervals are supported: long intervals (comprising years and months), and short intervals, comprising days, hours, minutes, seconds.
TIME A time of the day.
TIMESTAMP A value containing a date and a time without a timezone. DATETIME
DATE A date value.
GEOMETRY A geographic data type (only rudimentary support at this point).
ROW A tuple (anonymous struct with named fields) with 1 or more elements. Example ROW(left int null, right varchar)
ARRAY An array with element of the specified type. Used as a suffix for another type (e.g., INT ARRAY)
MAP A map with keys and values of specified types. The syntax is MAP<KEYTYPE, VALUETYPE>
VARIANT A dynamically-typed value that can wrap any other SQL type

  • For DECIMAL types: 23.456 has a precision of 5 and a scale of 3. If scale is missing it is assumed to be 0.

  • A suffix of NULL or NOT NULL can be appended to a type name to indicate the nullability. A type with no suffix is not nullable by default.

  • The FLOAT type is not supported. Please use REAL or DOUBLE instead. Various SQL dialects do not agree on the size of the FLOAT type, so we have decided to prohibit its use to avoid subtle bugs.

  • INTERVAL, NULL and types are currently not supported in table schemas or as types for the columns of output views (non-LOCAL views).

  • VARIANT is used to implement JSON. See JSON support

  • Values of type ROW can be constructed using the ROW(x, y, z) syntax, or, when not ambiguous, using the tuple syntax (x, y, z), where x, y, and z are expressions. E.g. SELECT x, (y, z+2) FROM T, is equivalent to SELECT x, ROW(y, z+2) FROM T.

Computations on nullable types

A type is nullable if it can represent the NULL value. For input tables the nullability of a column is declared explicitly. For intermediate results and output views the compiler infers the nullability of each column using type inference rules.

Most SQL operations are defined for nullable types. Our compiler follows the SQL standard in this respect. Most operations (e.g., +), when applied a NULL operand will produce a NULL value.

User-defined structures

Users can declare new structure types. Such types can be used for columns, record fields, user-defined function parameters or results.

For example, we can declare types address_typ and employee_typ:

CREATE TYPE address_typ AS (
   street          VARCHAR(30),
   city            VARCHAR(20),
   state           CHAR(2),
   postal_code     VARCHAR(6));

CREATE TYPE employee_typ AS (
  employee_id       DECIMAL(6),
  first_name        VARCHAR(20),
  last_name         VARCHAR(25),
  email             VARCHAR(25),
  phone_number      VARCHAR(20),
  hire_date         DATE,
  job_id            VARCHAR(10),
  salary            DECIMAL(8,2),
  commission_pct    DECIMAL(2,2),
  manager_id        DECIMAL(6),
  department_id     DECIMAL(4),
  address           address_typ);

An expression that constructs a structure uses the type name, e.g.:

employee_typ(315, 'Francis', 'Logan', 'FLOGAN',
    '555.777.2222', DATE '2004-05-01', 'SA_MAN', 11000, .15, 101, 110,
     address_typ('376 Mission', 'San Francisco', 'CA', '94222'))

Tables can have structure-valued columns, but these have to be fully qualified using both the table name and the column name in programs:

CREATE TABLE PERS(p0 employee_typ, p1 employee_typ);
CREATE VIEW V AS SELECT PERS.p0.address FROM PERS
WHERE PERS.p0.first_name = 'Mike'

Grammar for specifying types

type:
      typeName
      [ collectionsTypeName ]*

typeName:
      sqlTypeName
  |   compoundIdentifier
  |   MAP < type , type >
  |   ROW ( columnDecl [, columnDecl ]* )

sqlTypeName:
      char [ precision ] [ charSet ]
  |   varchar [ precision ] [ charSet ]
  |   DATE
  |   time
  |   timestamp
  |   GEOMETRY
  |   decimal [ precision [, scale] ]
  |   BOOLEAN
  |   integer
  |   BINARY [ precision ]
  |   varbinary [ precision ]
  |   TINYINT
  |   SMALLINT
  |   BIGINT
  |   REAL
  |   double
  |   VARIANT

collectionsTypeName:
      ARRAY

char:
      CHARACTER | CHAR

varchar:
      char VARYING | VARCHAR

decimal:
      DECIMAL | DEC | NUMERIC | NUMBER

integer:
      INTEGER | INT

varbinary:
      BINARY VARYING | VARBINARY

double:
      DOUBLE [ PRECISION ]

time:
      TIME [ precision ] [ timeZone ]

timestamp:
      TIMESTAMP [ precision ] [ timeZone ]

charSet:
      CHARACTER SET charSetName

timeZone:
      WITHOUT TIME ZONE

A compoundIdentifier is a sequence of identifiers separated by dots.