You may want to confirm or change the data type of an item to preserve the precision of a mixed data type computation, or to change the way a data item is handled for example interpreting numbers as strings).
Attention to data types is most important when computing items in the Query section. In this case the database server performs the computation, and the Interactive Reporting may receive the computed item with an unanticipated data type. To ensure that server correctly handles data computations, you should set the data type when performing mixed-data type computations.
Local calculations (Results, Pivot) are handled internally, and adjustment between 16- and 32-bit integers, for example, can be handled safely using the automatic or number data type specification.
To set data type properties for a request item:The following table describes the supported data types:
Table 19. Supported Data Types
A data type is determined automatically given the data type of the reference items and the computations performed. | |
Binary large object which is truncated at 64,000 bytes. Blob data types can include image formats such as: JPEG, .BMP, .GIF, and .PNG. See also Picture (BLOB Image) Support. | |
Variable data type of length determined by a single byte of computer storage. Bytes can store numeric values from 0 to 255, or a single text character. | |
Calendar date in server default format (typically mm/dd/yy). | |
Retains a 16-bit value (2 bytes). A 16-bit integer stores integer values from 0 to 16,777,216, and signed integers between +8,388,608 and –8,388,608. | |
Retains a 32-bit value (4 bytes). A 32-bit integer stores integer values from 0 to 4,294,967,296, and signed integers between +2,147,483,648 and –2,147,483,647. | |
Character data (long text) exceeding 25 bytes (use the string data type for text strings up to 255 characters). The maximum long text retrieved is 4000; characters anything greater than that is silently truncated. | |
Real numbers packed for use with EDA middleware. The results in the Interactive Reporting are the same as real numbers. | |
Text strings to a maximum length of 256 characters. Interactive Reporting supports very large character data type column fields, such as Microsoft SQL Server text data type files, and IBM's DB2 Character Large Object (CLOB) data types. The DB2 CLOB data type is SQL99-compliant and is used to store very large variable-length character strings (up to 10MB). Its length property is displayed with a default value of 4000 characters; however, this may be updated to any value between 1 and 4000 by an Interactive Reporting user. The length property determines the maximum length of the CLOB data string that can be displayed after a database query. CLOB column fields with data that are greater than 4000 bytes in length are truncated after the 4000th character. | |