Basic data types

supported by MaxCompute2.0 are listed in the following table. Columns in a MaxCompute table must be any of the listed types. New types include TINYINT, SMALLINT, INT,  FLOAT, VARCHAR, TIMESTAMP, and BINARY data type.The details are as follows:
Note At present, the Set commands supported by MaxCompute SQL and new version Mapreduce are divided into two ways:
  • Session Level: To use the new data types (Tinyint, Smallint, Int, Float, Varchar, TIMESTAMP BINARY), add a set statement before the table statement
    set odps.sql.type.system.odps2=true;
    And submit the execution together with the table statement.
  • Project level: that is to support new types of project level open. The Owner of project can set up project as required.
    setproject odps.sql.type.system.odps2=true;

    For a detailed description of setproject, please see:Other operations.

  • When it comes to INT types, 32 bits are added to the set statement and converted to BIGINT, 64 bits, if not added.
  • SDK 0.27.2-public version and above, Client 0.27.0 version and above support new data type.
MR type tasks do not support new data types for the time being.
Type New Constant Description
TINYINT Yes  1Y，-127Y 8-bit signed integer, range -128 to 127
SMALLINT Yes  32767S, -100S  16-bit signed integer, range -32768 to 32767
INT Yes  1000,-15645787 (Note2) 32 bit signed shaping, the range is -231 to 231 - 1.
BIGINT No 100000000000L, -1L 64 bit signed shaping, the range is -263 + 1 to 263 - 1.
FLOAT Yes  None 32-bit binary floating point
DOUBLE No 3.1415926 1E+7 64-bit binary floating point
DECIMAL No 3.5BD， 99999999999.9999999BD(Note1) Decimal precision number type, shaping part range -1036 + 1 to 1036 - 1, decimal part accurate to 10-18
VARCHAR Yes  None (Note3) Variable-length character type, n is the length, and the range is 1 to 65535.
STRING No “abc”,’bcd’,”alibaba” ‘inc’ (Note4) A single string length can be up to 8M
BINARY Yes  None Binary data type, a single string length can be up to 8M
DATETIME No DATETIME ‘2017-11-11 00:00:00’ Date-time type, range from December 31, 999 to January 1-9, 0000, exact to milliseconds (note 5)
TIMESTAMP Yes  TIMESTAMP ‘2017-11-11 00:00:00.123456789’ It is independent of the time zone and ranges from January 1st 0000 to December 31, 9999 23.59:59.999999999,  and is accurate to nanosecond-level.
BOOLEAN No TRUE，FALSE True/False, Boolean type
All data types in the preceding table can be NULL.
Note
  • NOTE 1:When insert is constant to decimal field, pay attention to the writing of constants. For example,3.5BD in the definition of constants.
    insert into test_tb(a) values (3.5BD);

    The a field is decimal type.

  • NOTE 2: For INT constant, if the range of INT is exceeded, INT is converted into BIGINT;  if the range of BIGINT is exceeded, it is converted into DOUBLE. 
    In MaxCompute versions earlier than 2.0, all INT types in SQL script are converted to BIGINT , for example: 
    create table a_bigint_table(a int); -- the int here is actually treated as a bigint
select cast(id as int) from mytable; -- the int here is actually treated as a bigint

    To be compatible with earlier MaxCompute versions, MaxCompute 2.0 retains this conversion without setting odps.sql.type.system.odps2 as True. However, a warning is triggered when INT is treated as BIGINT. In this case, we recommend that you change an Int to a Bigint to avoid confusion.

  • NOTE 3: VARCHAR constants can be expressed by STRING constants of implicit transformation.
  • NOTE 4: STRING constants support connections, for example, abc xyz is parsed as abcxyz, and different parts can be written on different lines.
  • NOTE 5: The time value displayed by the current query does not contain milliseconds. The tunnel command specifies the time format through-dfp , and can be specified in milliseconds, such astunnel upload -dfp 'yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss.SSS' , for more information about tunnel commands, refer toTunnel commands.
MaxCompute2.0 supports the complex data types listed in the following table.
Note If a complex data type is involved when you run an SQL command, the set command set  odps.sql.type.system.odps2=true; must be added before the SQL command. The set command and SQL command are then submitted simultaneously.
Type Definition method Construction method
ARRAY array< int >;array< struct< a:int, b:string >> array(1, 2, 3); array(array(1, 2); array(3, 4))
MAP  map< string, string >;map< smallint, array< string>> map(“k1”, “v1”, “k2”, “v2”); map(1S, array(‘a’, ‘b’), 2S,  array(‘x’, ‘y))
STRUCT  struct< x:int, y:int>;struct< field1:bigint, field2:array< int>, field3:map< int, int>> named_struct(‘x’, 1, ‘y’, 2); named_struct(‘field1’, 100L,  ‘field2’, array(1, 2), ‘field3’, map(1, 100, 2, 200)