Introduction
In this article you will learn about data types of Power BI. Power BI provides the feature to change the data type of the source data into the required form of data visualization.
This idea is significant because some DAX capacities have unique data type necessities. While much of the time DAX will certainly change over a data type for you, there are a few situations where it won't. For example, if a DAX work requires a Date data type and the information type for your section is Text, the DAX capacity won't work accurately. In this way, it's both significant and helpful to get the right data type for a section.
Data Type in Query Editor
The Data Type drop down in Query Editor has two new data types, Date/Time/Timezone and Duration. At the point when a section with these data types is stacked into the model and seen in in Data or Report, a segment with a Date/Time/Timezone data type will be changed over into a Date/Time, and a segment with a Duration data type is changed over into a Decimal Number.
Number Types
There are three types of number data in Power BI.
Decimal Number
It represents a 64-bit floating-point number. It can handle negative values from -1.79E +308 through -2.23E -308, 0 and positive values from 2.23E -308 through 1.79E + 308. The largest number that supports decimal value can be 15 digits long.The decimal separator can occur anywhere in the number.
Fixed Decimal Number
Has a fixed location for the decimal separator. The decimal separator always has four digits to its right and allows for 19 digits of significance. The largest value it can represent is 922,337,203,685,477.5807 (positive or negative).
Whole Number
Represents a 64-bit integer value. As it’s an integer, it has no digits to the right of the decimal place. It allows for 19 digits; positive or negative whole numbers between -9,223,372,036,854,775,807 (-2^63+1) and 9,223,372,036,854,775,806 (2^63-2).
Date/Time Type
There are 5 type of date/time data types available in Power BI.
Date/Time
It represents both date and time value. The time portion of a date is stored as a fraction to whole multiples of 1/300 seconds (3.33 ms). Dates between years 1900 and 9999 are supported.
Date
It represents only the date part, when converted into the model, it's just like date/time with zero for the fractional value.
Time
It represents only date part, when converted into the model, it just like date/time with no digits to the left of the decimal place.
Date/Time/TimeZone
It represents a UTC Date/Time with a timezone offset. It’s converted into Date/Time when loaded into the model. The Power BI model doesn't adjust the timezone based on a user's location or locale etc.
Duration
It represents a length of time. It’s converted into a Decimal Number Type when loaded into the model.
Text DataType
A data string. It can be strings, numbers, or dates represented in a text format. Maximum string length can be 268,435,456 Unicode characters or 536,870,912 bytes.
True/False
A Boolean value of either a True or False.
Binary Data Type
The Binary data type can be used to represent any other data with a binary format. Inside the Query Editor, you can use it when loading binary files if you convert it to other data types before loading it to the Power BI model.
Summary
These are some data types that BI supports in query editor. Hope you understand. Thanks for reading.