Data types

This topic lists the data types available in Firebolt.

Category	Data Type	Aliases	Description
Numeric	INTEGER	INT, INT4	A four-byte signed integer.
	BIGINT	LONG, INT8	An eight-byte signed integer.
	NUMERIC	DECIMAL	An exact numeral defined by a fixed precision and scale, with a default of `38` for precision and `9` for scale.
	REAL	FLOAT4	A four-bye floating point number with six decimal digits of precision.
	DOUBLE PRECISION	DOUBLE, FLOAT, FLOAT8, FLOAT(p)	An eight-byte floating point number with fifteen decimal digits of precision.
Boolean	BOOLEAN	BOOL	A logical boolean value of true or false.
Composite	ARRAY		An array that holds multiple values of the same data type.
Composite	STRUCT		Named values of varying data types grouped in a defined structure.
Date & Timestamp	DATE		A calendar date including the year, month, and day.
	TIMESTAMP		A calendar date and time in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), including the year, month, day, hour, minute, second, and microsecond.
	TIMESTAMPTZ		A calendar date and time in the local timezone, including year, month, day, hour, minute, second, and microsecond.
String	TEXT		A character string of variable length.
Binary	BYTEA		Binary data of variable length.
Spatial	GEOGRAPHY		Geographic data, including points, LineStrings, Polygons and collections thereof.

For more information about converting a value with a given data type to another, see Type Conversion.

Numeric

INTEGER

A whole number ranging from -2,147,483,648 to 2,147,483,647. INTEGER data types require 4 bytes of storage. Aliases: INT, INT4.

BIGINT

A whole number ranging from -9,223,372,036,854,775,808 to 9,223,372,036,854,775,807. BIGINT data types require 8 bytes of storage. Aliases: LONG, INT8.

NUMERIC

A fixed-point numeric data type defined by its precision (total number of digits) and scale (number of digits to the right of the decimal point). For more information, see NUMERIC data type. Aliases: DECIMAL.

REAL

A floating-point number that has six decimal-digit precision. REAL data types require 4 bytes of storage. Aliases: FLOAT4.

DOUBLE PRECISION

A floating-point number that has 15 decimal-digit precision. DOUBLE data types require 8 bytes. Aliases: DOUBLE, FLOAT, FLOAT8, FLOAT(p) where 25 <= p <= 53.

Boolean

BOOLEAN

Represents boolean value of TRUE or FALSE. Aliases: BOOL

Composite

ARRAY

Represents an array of values. All elements of the array must have the same data type. Elements of the array can be of any supported data type including nested arrays (array with arrays). Array columns must be defined with the data type of the array elements, and optionally whether or not those elements are nullable. The following syntax options are supported:

ARRAY(<data-type> [NULL | NOT NULL])
<data-type> ARRAY
<data-type>[]

For example, the following three queries will create tables with the same nullable demo_array column of TEXT elements:

CREATE TABLE demo1 (
demo_array ARRAY(TEXT NULL) 
);

CREATE TABLE demo2 (
demo_array TEXT[]
);

CREATE TABLE demo3 (
demo_array TEXT ARRAY 
);

You can also specify that an array be NOT NULL, but you must then use the ARRAY(<data-type> NOT NULL) syntax. You can access a specific array element with an array subscript expression: array_value[index]. The supplied index must be of type INT or BIGINT. An array of n elements starts with array_value[1] and ends with array_value[n]. Array subscript expressions:

raise an error if the subscript expression evaluates to a negative number or 0,
return NULL if the array is NULL, or if the subscript expression evaluates to NULL or an index larger than the size of the array,
return the specific element of the array for subscript expressions evaluating to a number in the range [1, array_size].

Example

The following CREATE TABLE statement shows arrays of different element types and different nullabilities.

CREATE TABLE demo (
  a_t ARRAY(TEXT NULL) NULL,
  a_i ARRAY(INTEGER NULL) NOT NULL,
  a_d ARRAY(DATE NOT NULL) NULL,
  a_f ARRAY(REAL NOT NULL) NOT NULL,
  a_a ARRAY(ARRAY(INTEGER NULL) NULL) NULL
);

And the following INSERT INTO statement demonstrates examples of values for these arrays:

INSERT INTO demo VALUES
  (
    ['Hello', NULL, 'world'],
    [1, 42, NULL],
    [DATE '2000-01-01'],
    [3.14, 2.71, 9.8],
    [ [1, 2], [NULL], NULL]
  ),
  (
    NULL,
    [],
    NULL,
    [],
    NULL
  )

STRUCT

The struct data type is a composite type that allows you to group multiple fields of varying data types into a single logical unit. For more information, see STRUCT data type.

Date and timestamp

Type	Size	Min	Max	Resolution
`DATE`	4 bytes	`0001-01-01`	`9999-12-31`	1 day
`TIMESTAMP`	8 bytes	`0001-01-01 00:00:00.000000`	`9999-12-31 23:59:59.999999`	1 microsecond
`TIMESTAMPTZ`	8 bytes	`0001-01-01 00:00:00.000000 UTC`	`9999-12-31 23:59:59.999999 UTC`	1 microsecond

Dates are counted according to the proleptic Gregorian calendar. Each year consists of 365 days, with leap days added to February in leap years.

DATE

A year, month, and day calendar date independent of a time zone. For more information, see DATE data type.

TIMESTAMP

A year, month, day, hour, minute, second, and microsecond timestamp independent of a time zone. For more information, see TIMESTAMP data type.

TIMESTAMPTZ

A year, month, day, hour, minute, second, and microsecond timestamp associated with a time zone. For more information, see TIMESTAMPTZ data type.

String

TEXT

The TEXT type can be used to store character strings of any length using the UTF-8 encoding standard. Only the ASCII letters “A” through “Z” and “a” through “z” are classified as letters (e.g., UPPER('aäuü') returns 'AäUü'). The sort order of two strings is determined using the collation ucs_basic, which sorts strings by Unicode code point (e.g., 'Ab' < 'ab' is true as A (U+0041) is less than a (U+0061)). The character with code zero cannot be in a string. Regular string literals are enclosed in single quotes and don’t recognize escape sequences. Write two adjacent single quotes to include a single-quote character within a string literal (e.g., 'Leonard''s bicycle'). Escape string literals are specified by writing the letter E (upper or lower case) before the opening single quote, e.g., E'Firebolt 🔥\U0001F680'. Use backslash escape sequences within an escape string literal to represent special byte values:

Backslash escape sequence	Interpretation
`\b`	backspace
`\f`	form feed
`\n`	newline
`\r`	carriage return
`\t`	tab
`\o`, `\oo`, `\ooo` (o = 0–7)	octal byte value (decimal value must be between 1 and 255)
`\xh`, `\xhh` (h = 0–9, A–F)	hexadecimal byte value
`\uxxxx`, `\Uxxxxxxxx` (x = 0–9, A–F)	16 or 32-bit hexadecimal Unicode character value

Any other character following a backslash is taken literally (e.g., write two backslashes \\ to include one backslash character). The byte sequences you create must be valid UTF-8. For historic reasons, if you set the setting standard_conforming_strings to false, regular string literals will also recognize backslash escape sequences.

Binary

BYTEA

Represents variable size binary data. A binary string is a sequence of bytes - unlike TEXT, there is no character set. The BYTEA data type is nullable. For more information, see BYTEA data type.

Spatial

GEOGRAPHY

Represents geographic objects like points, LineStrings, Polygons, or collections thereof. For more information, see GEOGRAPHY data type.

Type Conversion

Values with a given data type can be converted to another data type. There are three contexts in which this happens:

Explicit: With an explicit invocation of the CAST function.
Assignment: Assigning values to a column of the target data type, as happens in the insert statement.
Implicit: Using a SQL function where none of the available signatures match the argument types. The planner inserts implicit casts.

The following table lists which type conversions are supported and in which context. “Explicit”, “Assignment”, and “Implicit” indicate in which type conversion context the conversion operation can be invoked.

“Explicit” means only as an explicit cast (using CAST or :: syntax).
“Assignment” means implicitly in assignment to a target column, as well as explicitly.
“Implicit” means implicitly in expressions, as well as the other cases.

From \ To	INT	BIGINT	REAL	DOUBLE	TEXT	BYTEA	BOOLEAN	NUMERIC	ARRAY	DATE	TIMESTAMP	TIMESTAMPTZ	GEOGRAPHY
UNKNOWN	Implicit	Implicit	Implicit	Implicit	Implicit	Implicit	Implicit	Implicit	Implicit	Implicit	Implicit	Implicit	Implicit
INT		Implicit	Implicit	Implicit	Assignm.		Explicit	Implicit
BIGINT	Assignm.		Assignm.	Implicit	Assignm.		Explicit	Implicit
REAL	Assignm.	Assignm.		Implicit	Assignm.		Explicit	Assignm.
DOUBLE	Assignm.	Assignm.	Assignm.		Assignm.		Explicit	Assignm.
TEXT	Assignm.	Assignm.	Assignm.	Assignm.		Explicit	Explicit	Explicit	Assignm.	Assignm.	Assignm.	Assignm.	Assignm.
BYTEA					Explicit								Implicit
BOOLEAN	Explicit				Assignm.
NUMERIC	Assignm.	Assignm.	Explicit	Implicit	Assignm.			Explicit
DATE					Assignm.						Implicit	Implicit
TIMESTAMP					Assignm.					Implicit		Implicit
TIMESTAMPTZ					Assignm.					Implicit	Implicit
GEOGRAPHY					Assignm.	Implicit

What is Firebolt?

Overview

Guides

SQL reference

General reference

API reference

Numeric

INTEGER

BIGINT

NUMERIC

REAL

DOUBLE PRECISION

Boolean

BOOLEAN

Composite

ARRAY

Example

STRUCT

Date and timestamp

DATE

TIMESTAMP

TIMESTAMPTZ

String

TEXT

Binary

BYTEA

Spatial

GEOGRAPHY

Type Conversion

What is Firebolt?

Overview

Guides

SQL reference

General reference

API reference

​Numeric

​INTEGER

​BIGINT

​NUMERIC

​REAL

​DOUBLE PRECISION

​Boolean

​BOOLEAN

​Composite

​ARRAY

​Example

​STRUCT

​Date and timestamp

​DATE

​TIMESTAMP

​TIMESTAMPTZ

​String

​TEXT

​Binary

​BYTEA

​Spatial

​GEOGRAPHY

​Type Conversion

Numeric

INTEGER

BIGINT

NUMERIC

REAL

DOUBLE PRECISION

Boolean

BOOLEAN

Composite

ARRAY

Example

STRUCT

Date and timestamp

DATE

TIMESTAMP

TIMESTAMPTZ

String

TEXT

Binary

BYTEA

Spatial

GEOGRAPHY

Type Conversion