Data Type Transformation

The Data Type transformation changes the type of data in a column or columns. Sometimes a column from the original source is one type, and you want to relate it to a column from another source that is a different type. You would need to change one of them so that the data types match.

Data type conversions include varchar, integer, float, date, and datetime. When you change a data type, Modeler changes the selected column, it does not create a new column.

When changing date or datetime columns, you may see these results:

  • When you change a date to a datetime, Modeler updates the data in the column and adds the timestamp 12:00:00.000AM.
  • When you change a datetime to a date, Modeler drops the timestamp.
  • When you change a datetime to a varchar, Modeler reformats the date, from the 08/29/2016 5:39:00.000 AM format as a datetime to the 2016-09-02 06:01:00.000 format as a varchar.

When changing varchar columns to integer or float, change or remove any non-numeric characters first. By default if a varchar with non-numeric characters is converted to integer or float, the conversion results in 0.0.