Data Types
Hyper provides a rich set of native data types.
Generally, Hyper's type system can be divided into two buckets: atomic types, which describe single values, and composite types, which describe collections of values. However, this distinction is made for educational purposes only; both kinds are equally supported, and there is no fundamental limitation applying to either category.
Atomic Types
Atomic types comprise fundamental, general-purpose data types. The following table lists all available atomic types. Most of the alternative names listed in the "Aliases" column are supported for compatibility with PostgreSQL.
| Name | Aliases | Description |
|---|---|---|
BIGINT | INT8 | signed eight-byte integer |
BOOLEAN | BOOL | Boolean value with ternary logic (true/false/unknown) |
BYTES | binary data ("byte array") | |
CHARACTER [ (n) ] | CHAR [ (n) ] | fixed-length character string |
CHARACTER VARYING (n) | VARCHAR (n) | variable-length character string with limit |
DATE | calendar date (year, month, day) | |
REAL | FLOAT4 | single precision floating-point number (4 bytes) |
DOUBLE PRECISION | FLOAT, FLOAT8 | double precision floating-point number (8 bytes) |
INTEGER | INT, INT4 | signed four-byte integer |
INTERVAL | time span; not supported in Tableau | |
NUMERIC [ (p, s) ] | DECIMAL [ (p, s) ] | exact numeric of selectable precision |
SMALLINT | INT2 | signed two-byte integer |
TEXT | variable-length character string | |
TIME [ WITHOUT TIME ZONE ] | time of day (no time zone) | |
TIMESTAMP [ WITHOUT TIME ZONE ] | date and time (no time zone) | |
TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE | TIMESTAMPTZ | date and time, including time zone |
GEOGRAPHY | a geography object |
Persisting NUMERICs with a precision greater than 18 requires at least database version 3.
Persisting 32-bit floating point values (e.g., type REAL) requires at least database version 4.
Up until Hyper API release 0.0.18825 Hyper used 64-bit floating points for all float types (i.e., also for REAL).
Composite Types
Composite types are collections of multiple data items in a single SQL value. They allow for dedicated schema denormalization, which can be useful for specific domains, such as machine learning applications.
Array
An array is an ordered sequence of values. Arrays in Hyper are strongly-typed and can be built from all supported atomic types. See Array Type for more details.
Further Reading
📄️ Boolean Type
Hyper provides the standard SQL type boolean. The boolean type can
📄️ String Types
Hyper supports three genera-purpose string types:
📄️ Numeric Types
Numeric types consist of two-, four-, and eight-byte integers, as well
📄️ Date/Time Types
Hyper supports the set of SQL date and time types shown in the table below.
📄️ Binary Data Type
The bytes data type allows storage of binary strings.
📄️ Array Type
An array is a sequential collection of elements packed into a single SQL value.