Data types

FastStats supports the following data types:

Selector¶

A set of categorical codes with associated descriptions (a pick list of values). Selectors are very efficient in terms of both storage and query speed. In a relational database they are normally stored as 'lookup' tables.

Text¶

Up to 255 bytes long (ASCII or UTF-8) or 80 bytes if AES encrypted.

Reference¶

A unique reference number (URN). This is a candidate key (could be primary key) on a table. A FastStats table (and it's associated lookups) can have at most 1 reference variable but does not have to have one. Users can save lists of reference numbers into a file and use these as part of their selection. A Reference can either be a numeric (up to 2,147,483,646) or text (80 bytes in length).

Selecting lists of reference numbers is very fast and URN files can be generated by tools outside of FastStats to specify lists of records. This can be very useful for selecting 'suppression lists' or 'previously contacted' lists without reloading data.

Numeric¶

Stores numeric data with a number of possible ranges and precision. This included Elapsed Time.

Currency¶

A subset of the Numeric types that are safe for storing currency values (i.e. no binary floating point values). The currency type also allows a currency symbol to be associated with the column.

Date¶

A point in time stored to the nearest day. Dates can span a per variable range of 178 years. Be sure to exclude any marker dates with a special meaning from the specified date range so that they correctly go into the 'Unclassified category.

Datetime¶

A point in time stored to the nearest second. The DateTime data type has a fixed range, starting at 01/01/2000 00:00:00 and going to 31/12/2063 23:59:59.