Data Types in Data Connections

When you work with data from connections to external data sources, Spotfire will map the data types that the columns have in the data source to Spotfire data types. This means that a column can have a different data type in Spotfire, compared to the original data type of the column in the data source.

Supported data types and type mappings

The database data types that are supported differ depending on the connector. For complete information on supported data types, and the way they are mapped to corresponding data types in Spotfire, see the help topic about data types for the connector you are using, for example SQL Server Data Types.

You can inspect what data type each column will assume in Spotfire, when you create your data connection. In the Columns in selected view list of the Views in Connection dialog, all columns in a selected view are listed. In this list, some data types have different names, rather than the Spotfire data type names. Those data type names are used only in the context of creating or editing data connections, because they are closer to the data type names often used in databases. The following Spotfire data types use different names in this context:

Unsupported data types in connections

If a database table, that you want to load into Spotfire with a connector, contains columns with data types that are not supported by that connector, those columns will be excluded when the data is loaded. This means that the columns will not be included in the resulting data table in Spotfire.

When you are modeling a data connection in the Views in Connection dialog, be aware that any columns with unsupported data types will not be displayed in the Columns in selected view list. Also, you will not be notified of those columns’ exclusion.

Tip: If you want to verify whether a database table contains any columns with unsupported data types, you can create a custom query. Write a query that fetches all columns from that database table (select * from <DatabaseTableName>) and click Verify. If the data contains any columns with unsupported data types, an error message will be displayed listing the columns that could not be mapped to Spotfire data types.