Datatype Reference Overview
When you create a mapping or task, you create a set of instructions for Informatica Cloud to read data from a source and write it to a target. Informatica Cloud transforms data based on the data flow and the datatype assigned to each field.
Informatica Cloud uses the following types of datatypes:
- Native datatypes
- Native datatypes are specific to sources, targets, and lookup objects in a mapping or task. In a mapping, native datatypes appear in the sources, targets, and lookup objects.
- Transformation datatypes
- Transformation datatypes are internal datatypes that appear in all transformations in a mapping. They are based on ANSI SQL-92 generic datatypes. Informatica Cloud uses transformation datatypes to move data across platforms.
In tasks that move data without transforming it, such as Data Replication tasks, Informatica Cloud converts the native datatypes from the source to the comparable native datatypes in the target. In mappings and Mapping Configuration tasks, Informatica Cloud converts the native datatypes from the source to the comparable transformation datatypes before it starts transforming the data. When Informatica Cloud writes to a target, it converts the transformation datatypes to the comparable native datatypes.
When you specify a multibyte character set, the datatypes allocate additional space in the database to store characters of up to three bytes.