Data Types - Amazon Kinesis Data Analytics SQL Reference

Data Types

The following table summarizes the data types supported by Amazon Kinesis Data Analytics.

SQL Data Type JSON Data Type Description Notes

BIGINT

number

64-bit signed integer

BINARY

BASE64-encoded string

Binary (non character) data

Substring works on BINARY. Concatenation does not work on BINARY.

BOOLEAN

boolean

TRUE, FALSE, or NULL

Evaluates to TRUE, FALSE, and UNKNOWN.

CHAR (n)

string

A character string of fixed length n. Also specifiable as CHARACTER

n must be greater than 0 and less than 65535.

DATE

string

A date is a calendar day (year/month/day).

Precision is day. Range runs from the largest value, approximately +229 (in years) to the smallest value, -229.

DECIMAL

DEC

NUMERIC

number

A fixed point, with up to 19 significant digits.

Can be specified with DECIMAL, DEC, or NUMERIC.

DOUBLE

DOUBLE PRECISION

number

A 64-bit floating point number

64-bit approx value; -1.79E+308 to 1.79E+308. Follows the ISO DOUBLE PRECISION data type, 53 bits are used for the number's mantissa in scientific notation, representing 15 digits of precision and 8 bytes of storage.

INTEGER

INT

number

32-bit signed integer. Range is -2147483648 to 2147483647 [ 2**(31) to 2**(31)- 1]

INTERVAL <timeunit> [TO <timeunit>]

string

Day-time intervals supported, year-month intervals not supported

Allowed in an expression in date arithmetic, but cannot be used as a datatype for a column in a table or stream.

<timeUnit>

string

The units of a INTERVAL value

Supported units are YEAR, MONTH, DAY, HOUR, MINUTE, and SECOND

SMALLINT

number

16-bit signed integer

Range is -32768 to 32767

[2**(15) to 2**(15)-1]

REAL

number

A 32-bit floating point number

Following the ISO REAL data type, 24 bits are used for the number's mantissa in scientific notation, representing 7 digits of precision and 4 bytes of storage. The minimum value is -3.40E+38; the maximum value is 3.40E+38.

TIME

string

A TIME is a time in a day (hour:minute:second).

Its precision is milliseconds; its range is 00:00:00.000 to 23:59:59.999. Since the system clock runs in UTC, the timezone used for values stored in a TIME or TIMESTAMP column is not considered.

for values stored in a TIME or TIMESTAMP column.

TIMESTAMP

string

A TIMESTAMP is a combined DATE and TIME.

A TIMESTAMP value always has a precision of 1 millisecond. It has no particular timezone. Since the system clock runs in UTC, the timezone used for values stored in a TIME or TIMESTAMP column is not considered. Its range runs from the largest value, approximately +229 (in years) to the smallest value, -229. Each timestamp is stored as a signed 64-bit integer, with 0 representing the Unix epoch (Jan 1, 1970 00:00am). This means that the largest TIMESTAMP value represents approximately 300 million years after 1970, and the smallest value represents approximately 300 million years before 1970. Following the SQL standard, a TIMESTAMP value has an undefined timezone.

TINYINT

number

8-bit signed integer

Range is -128 to 127,

VARBINARY (n)

BASE64-encoded string

Also specifiable as BINARY VARYING

n must be greater than 0 and less than 65535.

VARCHAR (n)

string

Also specifiable as CHARACTER VARYING

n must be greater than 0 and less than 65535.

Notes

Regarding characters:

  • Amazon Kinesis Data Analytics supports only Java single-byte CHARACTER SETs.

  • Implicit type conversion is not supported. That is, characters are mutually assignable if and only if they are taken from the same character repertoire and are values of the data types CHARACTER or CHARACTER VARYING.

Regarding numbers:

  • Numbers are mutually comparable and mutually assignable if they are values of the data types NUMERIC, DECIMAL, INTEGER, BIGINT, SMALLINT, TINYINT, REAL, and DOUBLE PRECISION.

The following sets of data types are synonyms:

  • DEC and DECIMAL

  • DOUBLE PRECISION and DOUBLE

  • CHARACTER and CHAR

  • CHAR VARYING or CHARACTER VARYING and VARCHAR

  • BINARY VARYING and VARBINARY

  • INT and INTEGER

  • Binary values (data types BINARY and BINARY VARYING) are always mutually comparable and are mutually assignable.

Regarding dates, times, and timestamps:

  • Implicit type conversion is not supported (that is, datetime values are mutually assignable only if the source and target of the assignment are both of type DATE, or both of type TIME, or both of type TIMESTAMP).

  • The Amazon Kinesis Data Analytics timezone is always UTC. The time functions, including the Amazon Kinesis Data Analytics extension CURRENT_ROW_TIMESTAMP, return time in UTC.