Data Types

Table 3. Data Types
Apache Spark SQL	JDBC
Bigint	BIGINT
Binary	VARBINARY or LONGVARBINARY¹, ²
Boolean	BOOLEAN
Date	DATE
Decimal	DECIMAL
Double	DOUBLE
Float	REAL
Int	INTEGER
Smallint	SMALLINT
String³, ⁴	VARCHAR or LONGVARCHAR
Timestamp	TIMESTAMP
Tinyint	TINYINT
Varchar⁵	VARCHAR

¹ If the BinaryDescribeType property is set to varbinary (the default), this data type maps to VARBINARY. If set to longvarbinary, this data type maps to LONGVARBINARY.

² Supported only for Apache Spark SQL 2.0 and higher.

³ Maximum of 2 GB

⁴ If the StringDescribeType connection property is set to varchar (the default), the String data type maps to VARCHAR. If StringDescribeType is set to longvarchar, String maps to LONGVARCHAR. StringDescribeType affects all columns reported as String, even columns that were originally cast as Varchar. This is important to note because the Spark Thrift server, when returning result metadata for Varchar columns, reports column type as (12) STRING and precision as 2147483647.

⁵ When returning result set metadata for Varchar columns, the Spark Thrift server reports the column type as (12) STRING and the precision as 2147483647. For the latest information about this issue, refer to the Apache JIRA SPARK-5918 issue Web page.