PowerCenter - DataType (Conversion)

About

The Designer displays two types of datatypes:

• Native datatypes. Specific to the source and target databases, flat files, or ERP systems. Native datatypes appear in the Source Analyzer and Target Designer. They also appear in source and target definitions in the Mapping Designer and in source definitions in the Mapplet Designer.
• Transformation datatypes. Set of datatypes that appear in the transformations. They are internal datatypes based on ANSI SQL-92 generic datatypes, which the Integration Service uses to move data across platforms.

Because the transformation datatypes are generic, you can use different source and target platforms. For example, you can read information from an Oracle source and write it to a Sybase target. Likewise, you can read information from a flat file and write it to a Microsoft SQL Server database. The transformation datatypes appear in all transformations in a mapping.

Articles Related

Conversion

When the Integration Service reads source data, it converts the native datatypes to the comparable transformation datatypes before transforming the data. When the Integration Service writes to a target, it converts the transformation datatypes to the comparable native datatypes.

When you specify a multibyte character set, the datatypes allocate additional space in the database to store characters of up to three bytes.

Documentation / Reference

• Datatype Reference in Powercenter Designer Guide (page 235)