Attribute Data Types

In a TigerGraph instance, a graph consists of different types of vertices and edges. Each type of vertex and edge can have attributes associated with that type. For example, a Book vertex could have title, author, publication year, genre, and language attributes.

Each attribute of a vertex or edge has an assigned data type. This page describes the different data types that can be stored in vertex and edge attributes.

Primitive types

Primitive types are the most basic data types available within GSQL. They can also be used to construct other complex data types.

Name Default value Valid input format (regex) Range and precision Description

INT

0

[-]?[0-9]

--2^63 to +2^63 - 1 (-9,223,372,036,854,775,808 to 9,223,372,036,854,775,807)

8-byte signed integer

UINT

0

[0-9]+

0 to 2^64 - 1 (18,446,744,073,709,551,615)

8-byte unsigned integer

FLOAT

0.0

[ -+ ] ? [ 0 - 9 ] * . ? [ 0 - 9 ] ( [ eE ] [ - ] ? [ 0 - 9 ] + ) ?

+/- 3.4 E +/-38, ~7 decimal digits of precision.

4-byte single-precision floating point number Examples: 3.14159, .0065e14, 7E23 See note below.

DOUBLE

0.0

[ -+ ] ? [ 0 - 9 ] * . ? [ 0 - 9 ] ( [ eE ] [ - ] ? [ 0 - 9 ] + ) ?

+/- 1.7 E +/-308, ~16 decimal digits of precision

8-byte double-precision floating point number. Has the same input and output format as FLOAT, but the range and precision are greater. See note below.

BOOL

false

true, false (case insensitive), 1, 0

true, false

Boolean true and false, represented within GSQL as true and false , and represented in input and output as 1 and 0

STRING

Empty string

.*

UTF-8 encoding. A string attribute does not have a maximum length limit by itself. However, the size of all attributes of a vertex or edge combined cannot exceed 10 MB.

Character string. The string value can optionally be enclosed by single quote marks or double quote marks.

[For v3.9.2+] FLOAT and DOUBLE values are displayed with up to 7 and 16 digits of precision, respectively.
Exponential notation

For FLOAT and DOUBLE values, the GSQL Loader can read input values in exponential notation (e.g., 1.25 E-7), but the GSQL query language cannot.

GSQL may display output values with exponential notation, however.

Some numeric expressions may return a non-numeric string result, such as "inf" for Infinity or "NaN" for Not a Number.

Advanced types

Name Default value Supported data format Range and Precision Description

DATETIME

UTC time 0

See Loading DATETIME Attribute

1582-10-15 00:00:00 to 9999-12-31 23:59:59

Date and time (UTC) as the number of seconds elapsed since the start of Jan 1, 1970. Time zones are not supported. Displayed in YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss format.

FIXED_BINARY(n)

N/A

N/A

Stream of n binary-encoded bytes

The legacy data type STRING COMPRESS has been deprecated since TigerGraph Server 3.0. You can no longer create new schema with the type STRING COMPRESS. As such, we have removed STRING COMPRESS from the documentation.

Existing schemas that are using STRING COMPRESS can continue to function normally. If you need reference for STRING COMPRESS, please refer to GSQL Language Reference version 3.5 or older.

Additionally, GSQL also supports the following complex data types:

Collection types

  • LIST: A list is an ordered collection of elements of the same type.

    • Default value: an empty list []

    • Supported element types: INT, DOUBLE, STRING, DATETIME, and UDT

    • To declare a list type, use angle brackets <> to enclose the element type, e.g. LIST<STRING>.

      Due to multithreaded GSQL loading, the initial order of elements loaded into a list might be different from their order in the input data.

  • SET: A set is an unordered collection of unique elements of the same type.

    • Default value: an empty set ()

    • Supported element types: INT, DOUBLE, STRING, DATETIME, and UDT.

    • To declare a set type, use angle brackets <> to enclose the element type, e.g. SET<INT>

  • MAP: A map is a collection of key-value pairs. It cannot contain duplicate keys and each key maps to one value.

    • Default value: an empty map

    • Supported key types: INT, STRING, and DATETIME

    • Supported value types: INT, DOUBLE, STRING, DATETIME, and UDT.

    • To declare a map type, use <> to enclose the types, with a comma to separate the key and value types, e.g., MAP<INT, DOUBLE>.

User-defined tuples

A User-Defined Tuple (UDT) represents an ordered structure of several fields of the same or different types. The supported field types are listed below. Each field in a UDT has a fixed size. A STRING field must be given a size in characters, and the loader will only load the first given number of characters. An INT or UINT field can optionally be given a size in bytes.

TYPEDEF TUPLE syntax
TYPEDEF TUPLE "<" field_name field_type ["(" field_size ")"]
                  ( "," field_name field_type ["(" field_size ")"] )* ">" Tuple_Name
Field type User-specified size Size Range (N is size)

INT

Optional

1, 2, 4, or 8 bytes. Default is 8.

0 to 2^(N*8) - 1

UINT

Optional

1, 2, 4, or 8 bytes. Default is 8.

-2^(N*8 - 1) to 2^(N*8 - 1) - 1

FLOAT

No

4 bytes

-3.4 E-38 to 3.4 E38

DOUBLE

No

8 bytes

-1.7 E-308 to 1.7 E308

DATETIME

No

1582-10-15 00:00:00 to 9999-12-31 23:59:59

BOOL

No

true or false

STRING

Required

Any number of characters

Any string under N characters

A UDT must be defined before being used as a field in a vertex type or edge type. To define a UDT, use the TYPEDEF TUPLE statement. Here is an example of a TYPEDEF TUPLE statement:

UDT Definition
TYPEDEF TUPLE <field1 INT(1), field2 UINT, field3 STRING(10), field4 DOUBLE> My_Tuple

In the above example, My_Tuple is the name of the UDT. It contains four fields: an 1-byte INT field named field1, a 4-byte UINT field named field2, a 10-character STRING field named field3, and an (8-byte) DOUBLE field named field4.