Amazon QuickSight – Data Types & Values

The primitive data types currently supported by Amazon QuickSight are Date, Decimal, Integer, and String. If Boolean values are provided, QuickSight will convert them to integers. Additionally, geospatial data types can be derived, where metadata is used to interpret the physical data type. Numeric values such as latitude and longitude are represented as numbers, while other geospatial categories are represented as strings.

It’s important to ensure that any tables or files used as data sources only contain fields that can be implicitly converted to these data types. If there are fields or columns that cannot be converted, QuickSight will skip them. In case of an error message indicating unsupported data types, the query or table should be altered to remove or recast the unsupported data types.

String and Text Data

• Fields or columns that contain characters are called strings.
• QuickSight supports the STRING data type, which can initially contain almost any type of data, such as names, descriptions, phone numbers, account numbers, JSON data, cities, postcodes, dates, and numbers for calculating purposes.
• Binary and character large objects (BLOBs) are not supported in dataset columns by QuickSight.
• The term “text” in the QuickSight documentation refers to “string data”.
• QuickSight tries to interpret data identified as other types, like dates and numbers, when querying or importing data for the first time.
• It’s recommended to check and verify that the assigned data types for your fields or columns are accurate.
• For each imported string field, QuickSight uses a field length of 8 bytes plus the UTF-8 encoded character length.
• Amazon QuickSight supports UTF-8 file encoding, but not UTF-8 (with BOM).

Numeric Data

• Numeric data includes integers and decimals.
• Integers are negative or positive whole numbers without decimal places and are of data type INT. QuickSight doesn’t distinguish between large and small integers, but integers over a value of 9007199254740991 or 2^53 – 1 may not display accurately in visuals.
• Decimals are negative or positive numbers with at least one decimal place and are of data type DECIMAL. Data is truncated beyond the fourth decimal place to the right, and QuickSight can display no more than four decimal places to the right of the decimal point.
• Calculations can be created using original decimal data while creating or editing a dataset.
• QuickSight allows calculations based on DECIMAL data with more than four decimal places to the right of the decimal point, but can only display up to four decimal places.
• The value is truncated, not rounded, when displayed in data preparation or analysis, and when imported into SPICE.

Date & Time Data

• Fields with Date data type include both date and time information and are also known as Datetime fields.
• QuickSight supports date and time formats that are compatible with its supported data formats.
• QuickSight uses UTC time for filtering, querying, and displaying date data.
• If a date doesn’t specify a time zone, QuickSight assumes UTC values.
• QuickSight converts date data with time zone offset to UTC before displaying it.
• For each DATE field in the imported data, QuickSight uses a field length of 8 bytes.
• QuickSight supports UTF-8 file encoding, but not UTF-8 (with BOM).