This document defines the data types supported for PostgreSQL-dialect databases.
Supported PostgreSQL data typesAll types except NUMERIC
, FLOAT4
, and JSONB
are valid as primary keys, foreign keys, and secondary indexes. FLOAT8
columns used as a key column cannot store NaN
values.
array
Ordered list of zero or more elements of any non-array type. The PostgreSQL interface doesn't support multi-dimensional arrays. For user-defined indexes, the lower bound must be one and the upper bound must be the length of the array. For more information, see Array type. bool
/ boolean
Logical boolean (true/false). bytea
Binary data ("byte array"). date
Dates ranging from 0001-01-01 to 9999-12-31. The DATE
type represents a logical calendar date, independent of time zone. A DATE
value doesn't represent a specific 24-hour time period. Rather, a given DATE
value represents a different 24-hour period when interpreted in different time zones, and might represent a shorter or longer day during daylight savings time transitions. To represent an absolute point in time, use the timestamptz
data type. float4
/ real
IEEE-754 single-precision binary floating-point format number (4 bytes) (Wikipedia link). float4
type follows PostgreSQL semantics:
float8
/ double precision
IEEE-754 double-precision binary floating-point format number (8 bytes) (Wikipedia link). float8
type follows PostgreSQL semantics:
int
An alias for int8
. In open source PostgreSQL, int
is a four-byte integer, but in PostgreSQL interface for Spanner int
maps to int8
, a signed eight-byte integer. int8
/ bigint
Signed eight-byte (64-bit) integer. interval
Data type used to represent duration or amount of time, without referring to any specific point in time. jsonb
Data type used for holding JSON data. It maps to the PostgreSQL JSONB data type. For more information, see Work with JSONB data. numeric
/ decimal
Arbitrary length numeric data. Optional precision and scale type modifiers (for example, numeric(18,4)
) are supported in DQL/DML statements (for example, SELECT
or INSERT
), but not in DDL statements (for example, CREATE
or ALTER
). For more information, see Work with NUMERIC data. NUMERIC
follows PostgreSQL semantics:
timestamptz
/timestamp with time zone
Date and time, including time zone. timestamp with time zone
can be expressed with a UTC offset. The following timestamp literal specifies America/Los_Angeles Pacific Standard Time 2016-06-22 19:10:25-08
. varchar
/ text
/ character varying
Variable-length character string. Optional type modifier (not applicable to the text
type) specifies a column size limit in characters (for example, varchar(64)
). Maximum column size limit for these types is 2621440 characters. smallserial
/ serial
/ bigserial
/ serial2
/ serial4
/ serial8
Aliases that map to identity columns with the data type bigint
. The database option default_sequence_kind
must be set before using serial types. Supported formats for date
data type
The following table shows the supported input formats for the date
data type. Note that the date interpretation is month-day-year similar to the case when the DateStyle
parameter is set to MDY
in open source PostgreSQL.
timestamptz
data type
See the following tables for the supported input formats for the timestamptz
data type.
Time input:
Example Description 04:05:06.789 ISO 8601 04:05:06 ISO 8601 04:05 ISO 8601 040506 ISO 8601 04:05 AM Same as 04:05; AM does not affect value 04:05 PM Same as 16:05; input hour must be <= 12 04:05:06.789-8 ISO 8601, with time zone as UTC offset 04:05:06-08:00 ISO 8601, with time zone as UTC offset 04:05-08:00 ISO 8601, with time zone as UTC offset 040506-08 ISO 8601, with time zone as UTC offset 040506+0730 ISO 8601, with fractional-hour time zone as UTC offset 040506+07:30:00 UTC offset specified to seconds (not allowed in ISO 8601) 2003-04-12 04:05:06 America/New_York Time zone specified by full name 2003-04-12 04:05:06-8 Time zone specified with -8, UTC offset for PSTTime zone input:
Example Description America/New_York Full time zone name -8:00:00 UTC offset for PST -8:00 UTC offset for PST (ISO 8601 extended format) -800 UTC offset for PST (ISO 8601 basic format) -8 UTC offset for PST (ISO 8601 basic format) zulu Military abbreviation for UTC z Abbreviation for zulu Supported formats forinterval
type
The following table shows the supported input formats for the interval
data type.
P1Y2M3DT4H5M6.5S
ISO 8601, format with designators (recommended format). Represents interval (months: 14, days: 3, seconds: 14706.5). P0001-02-03T04:05:06.5
ISO 8601, alternative format. Represents interval (months: 14, days: 3, seconds: 14706.5). 1 year 2 months 3 days 4 hours 5 minutes 6 seconds
Open source PostgreSQL format. Represents interval (months: 14, days: 3, seconds: 14706). -1 year -2 months 3 days 04:05:06.5
PostgreSQL format. Represents interval (months: -14, days: 3, seconds: 14706.5). @ 1 year 2 months -3 days 4 hours 5 mins 6 secs ago
PostgreSQL verbose format. Represents interval (months: -14, days: 3, seconds: -14706). 1-2
SQL standard; year-month interval. Represents interval (months: 14, days: 0, seconds: 0). 3 4:05:06
SQL standard; day-time interval. Represents interval (months:0, days: 3, seconds: 14706) 1-2 3 4:05:06
Mixed interval (both year-month and day-time). Represents interval (months:14, days: 3, seconds: 14706)
Unsupported formats for date
and timestamptz
data types
Aside from z
, time zone abbreviations such as PST
are not supported.
The following special literal values are also not supported: now
, yesterday
, today
, tomorrow
, epoch
, -infinity
and infinity
.
For example, the following query returns an error:
SELECT 'today'::timestamptz;
All other open source PostgreSQL data types are not supported. The following common types are not supported:
TIMESTAMP WITHOUT TIME ZONE
CHAR
Arrays in the PostgreSQL interface use the behavior and syntax described in the PostgreSQL Declaration of Array types, except for the specified Array type limitations and Spanner extension to open source PostgreSQL.
For the PostgreSQL interface, an array is an ordered list of zero or more elements of non-array values. Elements in an array must share the same type.
Arrays of arrays are not allowed. Queries that would produce an array of arrays return an error. An empty array and a NULL array are two distinct values. Arrays can contain NULL elements.
Declare an array typeThe following example shows how to create a table that declares an array:
CREATE TABLE students_info ( name text PRIMARY KEY, phone_numbers varchar[] );
Array declaration includes a name and square brackets ([]
) with the chosen array data type. In the previous example, the name is "phone_numbers", and varchar[]
denotes a varchar array for the phone contacts for students. The previous example also adds a text
type column for student names.
bigint[]
Simple array of 64-bit integers. float4[]
float8[]
Array of floats, either 4 bytes or 8 bytes. integer[3]
DDL syntax allows the exact size of arrays to be specified. Note, however, that declaring an array size does not enforce a size limit. Array size can be modified after declaration. integer ARRAY[4]
integer ARRAY
An alternative syntax which is more similar to the SQL standard by using the keyword ARRAY. As before, the size restriction is not enforced in any case. Construct an array
You can construct an array using array literals or array functions. To learn how, see Working with arrays in PostgreSQL-dialect databases.
Array limitations for PostgreSQL-dialect databasesThis section lists limitations for the array data type for PostgreSQL-dialect databases, as opposed to open source PostgreSQL.
Multidimensional arraysThe PostgreSQL interface does not support multi-dimensional arrays. For example, you cannot create the following array:
CREATE TABLE rectangle_grid ( id integer PRIMARY KEY, rectangle integer[4][3] );Array slices
The PostgreSQL interface supports using the array slice syntax, as shown in the following:
SELECT (array[10, 20, 30, 40])[2:3] → {20, 30}
Array indexes
The PostgreSQL interface does not support arrays with indexes that are different from the default values. For user-defined indexes, the lower bound must be 1
and the upper bound must be the length of the array.
Spanner extends the array data type with the VECTOR LENGTH
parameter. This optional parameter sets an array to a fixed size for use in a vector search. The length must be a non-negative number and zero is allowed. You can only apply this parameter on an array that uses the float8
or double precision
data types. The following example shows how to use VECTOR LENGTH
in a DDL statement for CREATE TABLE
:
CREATE TABLE Singers (
id int8 NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY,
singer_vector float[] NOT NULL VECTOR LENGTH 4
)
Serial types
Spanner maps serial types to identity columns with the data type bigint
. Serial types are aliases but not true types so you won't see them when you serialize your schema. The following example shows how to use serial
in a DDL statement for CREATE TABLE
:
ALTER DATABASE db SET spanner.default_sequence_kind = 'bit_reversed_positive';
CREATE TABLE Singers (
id serial PRIMARY KEY,
name text
);
The sample output of the GetDatabaseDDL
command for this schema looks like the following:
ALTER DATABASE db SET "spanner.default_sequence_kind" = 'bit_reversed_positive';
CREATE TABLE singers (
id bigint GENERATED BY DEFAULT AS IDENTITY NOT NULL,
name character varying,
PRIMARY KEY(id)
);
Interval type
Interval is a query-only type, and can't be stored in a table. A database schema can't have interval columns. However, the database schema can have column expressions and views with an interval type.
Unlike open source PostgreSQL, Spanner always uses ISO 8601 date and time format for interval output.
The interval type supports the following range:
interval(months: -120000, days: -3660000, microseconds: -316224000000000000)
interval(months: 120000, days: 3660000, microseconds: 316224000000000000)
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