Types of Data

Below is a list of the data types supported in Modelshop.

Text

A string of characters not meant to represent a numerical value. Common examples are words, sentences, and phrases. The text data type can include alphabetic, numeric and special characters.

Integer

A whole number, including 0 and negative numbers. Integers cannot include fractions or decimals. Integers are often used to represent numbers that cannot have fractional values, like counts.

Floats and Decimals

A number that can have fractional values. Floats can also contain 0 and negative numbers. In calculations, Floats and Decimals differ due to Floats being 32-bit while Decimals are 128-bit. This means that Decimals are better for calculations that need extreme precision whereas Floats are superior when limiting data storage is a factor. However, in most instances Floats and Decimals are interchangeable.

Boolean

A value containing only true or false.

Date

A calendar date values. Hypothetically, dates could be stored as strings, however, the Date data type is preferable because it allows programmatic access to dates, including the day of the week, year, and to perform calculations between dates easily and efficiently. See more about handling dates here.

Datetime

Similar with the Date Data Type, with the addition of a timestamp including hour, minute and second information.

Currency

Similar to a float, made to properly manage the specifics of currencies.

Dataitem

Enables the linkage between Data Lists. Whenever a link is created between Data Lists, the field from the source Data List used to create the link is converted into a Dataitem with the fields of the target Data List being the values stored in the new Dataitem. In addition, a new Dataitem is added to the target Data List containing the fields of the source Data List. These conversions and additions can be seen by checking the Detail Data tab on the right hand side of your model before and after linking the Data Lists.