MSQL Reference – Data Types

The MSQL query language supports a wide range of both common and special-purpose SQL data types.

MSQL data types are organized into categories and families according to the following layout:

Scalar types
- Boolean - A data type for storing true/false values.
- Numeric - Integral and floating-point numbers.
- Time points - Data types for representing specific timepoints, i.e. moments in time.
- Time periods - Data type for representing durations in time.
Range types
- Numeric ranges - Ranges of numeric values.
- Time ranges - Ranges of (start timepoint, end timepoint)
Multi-range types
- Numeric multi-ranges - Collections of numeric ranges.
- Temporal multi-ranges - Collections of temporal ranges.
String-like types
- Textual strings - Types for representing sequences of UTF-8 characters.
- Binary strings - Types for representing sequences of bytes.
Spatial types
- Single geometries - Single 2D spatial objects in the Euclidean plane (point, line, polygon).
- Geometry collections - Collections of 2D spatial objects in the Euclidean plane (mpoint, mline, mpolygon).
- Single geographies - Single 2D spatial objects on a geodetic sphere (gpoint, gline, gpolygon).
- Geography collections - Collections of 2D spatial objects on a geodetic sphere (gmpoint, gmline, gmpolygon).
Compound types
- Records

The following is a list of all the supported types in each category:

Scalar	Range	String-like	Spatial
Booleans	Numeric ranges	Textual strings	Single geometries
`bool`	`i8range`	`str`	`point`
Numerics	`i16range`	`symbol`	`line`
`i8`	`i32range`	Binary strings	`polygon`
`i16`	`i64range`	`bstr`	Geometry collections
`i32`	`u8range`	`bsymbol`	`mpoint`
`i64`	`u16range`		`mline`
`u8`	`u32range`		`mpolygon`
`u16`	`u64range`		Single geographies
`u32`	`f32range`		`gpoint`
`u64`	`f64range`		`gline`
`f32`	Temporal ranges		`gpolygon`
`f64`	`tsrange`		Geography collections
Timepoints	`epochrange`		`gmpoint`
`ts`			`gmline`
`epoch`			`gmpolygon`
Timeperiods
`tp`

Almost every type has one or more aliases, i.e. other names by which they can be referred to.
For example, for the bool type, names boolean and bit are also allowed.

The full list of available type aliases can be found in a separate section Type aliases.

Unlike many other SQL dialects, MSQL is very strict about data types. It doesn't allow implicit casts to/from different type categories (e.g. string <-> numeric, string <-> timepoint). Only the implicit cast to a supertype is generally allowed, e.g. i16 -> i64 or i32 -> f64, with casting rules similar to those of the C programming language.

For other needs, type casts (when allowed) must be explicitly stated using either the CAST function (CAST(x AS type)), or using the :: operator (x::type, the recommended way). At the end of this section is a table listing all the available type conversions.