Data Types

The Simba Athena ODBC Driver supports many common data formats, converting between Athena data types and SQL data types.

The following table lists the supported data type mappings.

Athena Type	SQL Type
ARRAY	SQL_VARCHAR if the `UseSQLUnicodeTypes` property is disabled. SQL_WVARCHAR if the `UseSQLUnicodeTypes` property is enabled.
BIGINT	SQL_BIGINT
BINARY	SQL_VARBINARY
BOOLEAN	SQL_BIT
CHAR	SQL_CHAR if the `UseSQLUnicodeTypes` property is disabled. SQL_WCHAR if the `UseSQLUnicodeTypes` property is enabled.
DATE Note: Not supported for Parquet files.	SQL_TYPE_DATE if the application uses ODBC version 3.00 or later. SQL_DATE if the application uses an ODBC version earlier than 3.00.
DECIMAL (p, s)	SQL_DECIMAL
DOUBLE	SQL_DOUBLE
FLOAT	SQL_REAL
INTEGER Note: Although Athena reports integer data as type INT, the connector reports integer data as type INTEGER to ensure compatibility with standard BI tools. For more information, see Integer Support.	SQL_INTEGER
MAP	SQL_VARCHAR if the `UseSQLUnicodeTypes` property is disabled. SQL_WVARCHAR if the `UseSQLUnicodeTypes` property is enabled.
SMALLINT	SQL_SMALLINT
STRING	SQL_VARCHAR if the `UseSQLUnicodeTypes` property is disabled. SQL_WVARCHAR if the `UseSQLUnicodeTypes` property is enabled.
STRUCT	SQL_VARCHAR if the `UseSQLUnicodeTypes` property is disabled. SQL_WVARCHAR if the `UseSQLUnicodeTypes` property is enabled.
TIMESTAMP	SQL_TYPE_TIMESTAMP if the application uses ODBC version 3.00 or later. SQL_TIMESTAMP if the application uses an ODBC version earlier than 3.00.
TINYINT	SQL_TINYINT
VARCHAR	SQL_VARCHAR if the `UseSQLUnicodeTypes` property is disabled. SQL_WVARCHAR if the `UseSQLUnicodeTypes` property is enabled.

Integer Support

Athena combines two different implementations of the integer data type:

In Data Definition Language (DDL) queries, Athena uses the INT data type from Apache Hive.
In all other queries, Athena uses the INTEGER data type from Presto.

To support the CAST queries that are used in many BI tools, the connector reports integer data as type INTEGER even though Athena reports the data as type INT.

Be aware that, when executing DDL queries, you must specify integer data using INT as the data type.

Note:

Athena supports some but not all DDL statements. For a list of the supported DDL statements, see "SQL and HiveQL Reference" in the Amazon Athena API Reference: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/athena/latest/ug/language-reference.html.