Postgres Plus Advanced Server Oracle Compatibility Developer's Guide
13.2 Supported C Data Types
An ECPGPlus application must deal with two sets of data types: SQL data types (such as SMALLINT, DOUBLE PRECISION and CHARACTER VARYING) and C data types (like short, double and varchar[n]). When an application fetches data from the server, ECPGPlus will map each SQL data type to the type of the C variable into which the data is returned.
In general, ECPGPlus can convert most SQL server types into similar C types, but not all combinations are valid. For example, ECPGPlus will try to convert a SQL character value into a C integer value, but the conversion may fail (at execution time) if the SQL character value contains non-numeric characters.
The reverse is also true; when an application sends a value to the server, ECPGPlus will try to convert the C data type into the required SQL type. Again, the conversion may fail (at execution time) if the C value cannot be converted into the required SQL type.
ECPGPlus can convert any SQL type into C character values (char[n] or varchar[n]). Although it is safe to convert any SQL type to/from char[n] or varchar[n], it is often convenient to use more natural C types such as int, double, or float.
The supported C data types are:
● short
● int
● unsigned int
● long long int
● float
● double
● char[n+1]
● varchar[n+1]
● bool
● and any equivalent created by a typedef
In addition to the numeric and character types supported by C, the pgtypeslib run-time library offers custom data types (and functions to operate on those types) for dealing with date/time and exact numeric values:
● timestamp
● interval
● date
● decimal
● numeric
To use a data type supplied by pgtypeslib, you must #include the proper header file.
