types.md

shorty	Built-in Types
synopsis	Find here a brief overview of the predefined types shipped with CDS.
status	released

Built-in Types

The following built-in types are provided:

CDS Type	Arguments / Remarks	Example Value	SQL (6)
UUID	an opaque string (1)	'be071623-8699-4106-...'	NVARCHAR(36)
Boolean		true	BOOLEAN
UInt8	(2)	133	TINYINT
Int16		1337	SMALLINT
Int32		1337	INTEGER
Integer		1337	INTEGER
Int64		1337	BIGINT
Integer64		1337	BIGINT
Decimal	(precision, scale) (3)	15.2	DECIMAL
Double		15.2	DOUBLE
Date		'2021-06-27'	DATE
Time		'07:59:59'	TIME
DateTime	sec precision	'2021-06-27T14:52:23Z'	TIMESTAMP
Timestamp	µs precision (4)	'2021-06-27T14:52:23.123Z'	TIMESTAMP
String	(length ) (5)	'hello world'	NVARCHAR
Binary	(length) (5)		VARBINARY
LargeBinary			BLOB
LargeString		'hello world'	NCLOB
Vector	(dimensionality) (7)		REAL_VECTOR

Remarks

⁽¹⁾ At runtime, UUIDs are treated as opaque values and are, for example, not converted to lower case on input. UUIDs generated in the application are RFC 4122-compliant. See Don't Interpret UUIDs! for details.

⁽²⁾ Not supported on PostgreSQL, as there is no TINYINT. Not supported on H2, as TINYINT is signed on H2. Use Int16 instead.

⁽³⁾ Arguments precision and scale are optional → if omitted a decfloat type is used

⁽⁴⁾ Up to 7 digits of fractional seconds; if a data is given with higher precision truncation may occur

⁽⁵⁾ Argument length is optional → use options cds.cdsc.defaultStringLength and cds.cdsc.defaultBinaryLength to control the project-specific default length used for OData and SQL backends. The default length is 5000 for SAP HANA and 255 for all other SQL backends. Note that default lengths are only applied on database level. Specify fixed lengths to get length checks on service level and/or inbound data.

⁽⁶⁾ Mapping to ANSI SQL types are given for comparison. Note though, that you need to have the specification of your target database in mind when considering, for example, length restrictions.

⁽⁷⁾ requires SAP HANA Cloud (QRC 1/2024 or later).

See also...

Mapping to OData EDM types{.learn-more}

HANA-native Data Types{.learn-more}