LC LSX Data Types

Standard Data Types

These are the types for data that you will read from or write to data sources you connect to using a Connector or HCL Enterprise Integrator (HEI). Standard data types come in the following three classes:

• Number (Int, Float, Currency, and Numeric)
• Datetime (Datetime)
• Stream (Text and Binary)

All types except Int and Float are represented by Connector classes described in this manual (Int is represented by a LotusScript® Long, and Float by a LotusScript® Double).

• Int: A four-byte signed integer. Integers are very efficient, but limited in precision and range. An Int is any whole number between -2147483647 and 2147483647 (9 digits of precision).
• Float: An eight-byte (double-precision) floating point number. Floats have less precision than currencies or numerics, but have a far greater range of values and are more efficient. A float has 15 digits of precision, and can represent any practical value (with an exponential range between 10^308 and 10^-308).
• Currency: An eight-byte integer with four decimal places. Currency provides greater precision than either int or float values. While it is less precise than a numeric, it is far more efficient, making it the preferable choice when higher precision is required. A currency has 19 digits of precision, and a maximum value of 922,337,203,685,477.5807.
• Numeric: A numeric is larger and less efficient than any other number data type, but has far greater precision. A numeric is assigned a precision (number of digits) up to 88 and a scale (number of decimal places) between -127 and 127, allowing it to express a very large number of values with very high precision.
• Datetime: A datetime indicates a specific date and time. Its range is any date between the years 1 and 32767, with a precision of .01 seconds. In addition, datetimes are specific to time zone and DST settings, making them usable in international settings.
• Text: Text is a stream of characters up to 4GB in length. All text has a character set, and conversion between character sets is supported. When transferring between systems, character set conversion is automatically performed as needed.
• Binary: Binary is a stream of bytes up to 4GB in length. All binary data has a format which is either BLOB (Binary Large Object) for unformatted data, or a structured binary format such as composite, text list, number list, and datetime list. The three list formats allow for a single data value to itself contain multiple values.

Advanced Data Types

Advanced data types comprise two areas: Fieldlist and connection.

• Fieldlist: A fieldlist itself is a collection of named fields with one or more values each, similar to a SQL table. A fieldlist as a data type allows for a single data value to itself contain a fieldlist, supporting hierarchical or nested data. The fields in a fieldlist data value may in turn contain additional nested fieldlists. Fieldlists are only usable by those back-end that support such data structures.
• Connection: A connection supports interaction with a back end system through a Connector. Connections as a data type are only valid when working with metaconnectors, since metaconnectors have properties of type connection.