Any value expression used in an application – including the names of objects that represent values – must conform to one of the available data types.

Data Types and Objects

Objects that represent values (constants, variables, fields and form fields) have an explicit data type attribute defined in the Object Dictionary. Value expressions that are not defined objects take implicit data types. The data type of an object or expression determines the values that an object or expression can represent and how the software handles the value.

The software recognizes nine different data types:

• ALPHA, VARALPHA, CHAR and VARCHAR are character (string) data types.
• INT, LONGINT, VASTINT, and NUMERIC are number data types.
• DATE is a date data type.

See Also

Character Data Types

Conversion Between Data Types

Data Types and Storage of Values

Data Types and the Use of Database Indexes

How To Use Data Types

Implicit Data Types of Literals

Number Data Types

The Date Data Type