Data Types

SQL data types define the type of data that a column can store. When you run the DESC TABLE command, you can see the data type of each column.

String and Binary Data Types

The maximum capacities of String and Binary are determined by their encodings and how the storage engine handles them. For example, String values are encoded into UTF-8. If all characters are 3 bytes in length, this field can store up to 715,827,882 characters. As for Binary types, they can store a maximum of 2,147,483,647 bytes.

Numeric Data Types

Decimal Type

GreptimeDB supports the decimal type, a fixed-point type represented as decimal(precision, scale), where precision is the total number of digits, and scale is the number of digits in the fractional part. For example, 123.45 has a precision of 5 and a scale of 2.

• precision can range from [1, 38].
• scale can range from [0, precision].

The default decimal is decimal(38, 10) if the precision and scale are not specified.

CREATE TABLE decimals(
    d DECIMAL(3, 2), 
    ts TIMESTAMP TIME INDEX,
);
INSERT INTO decimals VALUES ('0.1',1000), ('0.2',2000);
SELECT * FROM decimals;

Output:

+------+---------------------+
| d    | ts                  |
+------+---------------------+
| 0.10 | 1970-01-01T00:00:01 |
| 0.20 | 1970-01-01T00:00:02 |
+------+---------------------+

Date and Time Types

Interval Type

Interval type is used in scenarios where you need to track and manipulate time durations. It can be written using the following verbose syntax:

QUANTITY UNIT [QUANTITY UNIT...]

• QUANTITY: is a number (possibly signed),
• UNIT: is microsecond, millisecond, second, minute, hour, day, week, month, year, decade, century, or abbreviations or plurals of these units;

The amounts of the different units are combined, with each unit’s sign determining if it adds or subtracts from the total interval. For example, ‘1 year -2 months’ results in a net interval of ten months. Unfortunately, GreptimeDB doesn’t support writing the interval in the format of ISO 8601 time intervals such as P3Y3M700DT133H17M36.789S etc. But it’s output supports it.

Let’s take some examples:

SELECT '2 years 15 months 100 weeks 99 hours 123456789 milliseconds'::INTERVAL;

+---------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Utf8("2 years 15 months 100 weeks 99 hours 123456789 milliseconds") |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------+
| P3Y3M700DT133H17M36.789S                                            |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------+

55 minutes ago:

SELECT '-1 hour 5 minute'::INTERVAL;

+--------------------------+
| Utf8("-1 hour 5 minute") |
+--------------------------+
| P0Y0M0DT0H-55M0S         |
+--------------------------+

1 hour and 5 minutes ago:

SELECT '-1 hour -5 minute'::INTERVAL;

+---------------------------+
| Utf8("-1 hour -5 minute") |
+---------------------------+
| P0Y0M0DT-1H-5M0S          |
+---------------------------+

And of course, you can manipulate time with intervals by arithmetics. Get the time of 5 minutes go:

SELECT now() - INTERVAL '5 minute';

+----------------------------------------------+
| now() - IntervalMonthDayNano("300000000000") |
+----------------------------------------------+
| 2024-06-24 21:24:05.012306                   |
+----------------------------------------------+

Note that you can also input the interval type using the INTERVAL 'literal' format. Using the syntax '-1 hour -5 minute'::INTERVAL explicitly casts the string to an interval type, which is how SQL handles type conversion.

GreptimeDB also supports shorthand forms without spaces, such as 3y2mon4h:

SELECT INTERVAL '3y2mon4h';
SELECT '3y2mon4h'::INTERVAL;

+---------------------------------------------------------+
| IntervalMonthDayNano("3010670175542044842954670112768") |
+---------------------------------------------------------+
| P3Y2M0DT4H0M0S                                          |
+---------------------------------------------------------+
+---------------------------------------------------------+
| IntervalMonthDayNano("3010670175542044842954670112768") |
+---------------------------------------------------------+
| P3Y2M0DT4H0M0S                                          |
+---------------------------------------------------------+

It also supports signed numbers:

SELECT INTERVAL '-1h5m';
SELECT '-1h5m'::INTERVAL;

+----------------------------------------------+
| IntervalMonthDayNano("18446740773709551616") |
+----------------------------------------------+
| P0Y0M0DT0H-55M0S                             |
+----------------------------------------------+
+----------------------------------------------+
| IntervalMonthDayNano("18446740773709551616") |
+----------------------------------------------+
| P0Y0M0DT0H-55M0S                             |
+----------------------------------------------+

Supported abbreviations include:

Boolean Type

Use TRUE or FALSE to represent boolean values in SQL statements. For example:

CREATE TABLE bools(
    b BOOLEAN, 
    ts TIMESTAMP DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP() TIME INDEX,
);

INSERT INTO bools(b) VALUES (TRUE), (FALSE);

Data types compatible with MySQL and PostgreSQL

Type aliases

For users migrating from MySQL or PostgreSQL to GreptimeDB, GreptimeDB supports the following alias types.

You can use these alias types when creating tables. For example, use Varchar instead of String, Double instead of Float64, and Timestamp(0) instead of TimestampSecond.

CREATE TABLE alias_types (
  s TEXT,
  i DOUBLE,
  ts0 TIMESTAMP(0) DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP() TIME INDEX,
  PRIMARY KEY(s)
);

Date and time types

In addition to the Timestamp types used as the default time type in GreptimeDB, GreptimeDB also supports Date and DateTime types for compatibility with MySQL and PostgreSQL.

Examples

Create Table

CREATE TABLE data_types (
  s STRING,
  vbi BINARY,
  b BOOLEAN,
  tint INT8,
  sint INT16,
  i INT32,
  bint INT64,
  utint UINT8,
  usint UINT16,
  ui UINT32,
  ubint UINT64,
  f FLOAT32,
  d FLOAT64,
  dm DECIMAL(3, 2), 
  dt DATE,
  dtt DATETIME,
  ts0 TIMESTAMPSECOND,
  ts3 TIMESTAMPMILLISECOND,
  ts6 TIMESTAMPMICROSECOND,
  ts9 TIMESTAMPNANOSECOND DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP() TIME INDEX,
  PRIMARY KEY(s));

Describe Table

DESC TABLE data_types;

+--------+----------------------+------+------+---------------------+---------------+
| Column | Type                 | Key  | Null | Default             | Semantic Type |
+--------+----------------------+------+------+---------------------+---------------+
| s      | String               | PRI  | YES  |                     | TAG           |
| vbi    | Binary               |      | YES  |                     | FIELD         |
| b      | Boolean              |      | YES  |                     | FIELD         |
| tint   | Int8                 |      | YES  |                     | FIELD         |
| sint   | Int16                |      | YES  |                     | FIELD         |
| i      | Int32                |      | YES  |                     | FIELD         |
| bint   | Int64                |      | YES  |                     | FIELD         |
| utint  | UInt8                |      | YES  |                     | FIELD         |
| usint  | UInt16               |      | YES  |                     | FIELD         |
| ui     | UInt32               |      | YES  |                     | FIELD         |
| ubint  | UInt64               |      | YES  |                     | FIELD         |
| f      | Float32              |      | YES  |                     | FIELD         |
| d      | Float64              |      | YES  |                     | FIELD         |
| dm     | Decimal(3, 2)        |      | YES  |                     | FIELD         |
| dt     | Date                 |      | YES  |                     | FIELD         |
| dtt    | DateTime             |      | YES  |                     | FIELD         |
| ts0    | TimestampSecond      |      | YES  |                     | FIELD         |
| ts3    | TimestampMillisecond |      | YES  |                     | FIELD         |
| ts6    | TimestampMicrosecond |      | YES  |                     | FIELD         |
| ts9    | TimestampNanosecond  | PRI  | NO   | current_timestamp() | TIMESTAMP     |
+--------+----------------------+------+------+---------------------+---------------+