Data types in data connections
When you use a data connection to access data from an external data source, Spotfire maps the data types of columns 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 external system.
Supported data types and type mappings
Spotfire supports different data types in different external data sources. For complete information on the supported data types, and how they map to corresponding data types in Spotfire, see the help topic for the data connector, for example Microsoft SQL Server Data Types.
When you select data for a data connection, you can inspect what data type each column will assume in Spotfire.
When you inspect columns in the Select data and Views in Connection dialogs, some data types have different names from the Spotfire data type names. Those data type names are used only in the context of selecting data, because they are closer to the data type names often used in databases. The following Spotfire data types have different names in this context:
| Spotfire data type | Alternative name |
|---|---|
Currency
|
Decimal
|
LongInteger
|
Long
|
SingleReal
|
Float
|
Real
|
Double
|
Unsupported data types
If a database table contains columns with data types that are not supported, those columns are not included in the resulting data table in Spotfire.
When you select data in the Select data or Views in Connection dialog, be aware that any columns with unsupported data types are not displayed in the Columns list. Also, there is no notification to alert you to the exclusion of non-supported columns.
select * from <DatabaseTableName>) and
click
Verify. If the data contains any columns with
unsupported data types, an error message lists the columns that could not be
mapped to Spotfire data types.