Data types

Bizzkit PIM offers an advanced type system which is the foundation of PIM attributes. It is based upon the primitive .NET types.

Basic types

Basic types are types that contain a single value.

In the following, the Roundtrip format documents how the type is represented when exchanging data with external systems and values are converted to a string.

The string representation is guaranteed to roundtrip perfectly regardless of cultural settings, data type ranges in non-.NET programming languages, etc.

Numeric types

Integers

Decimals

Represents an exact decimal value.

PIM decimal types are based on the .NET System.Decimal type. They are named PDecimalN (where N=1..9) and all have 18 significant digits where N denotes the Number of digits that are reserved for decimal values.

So PDecimalN has 18-N digits before the decimal point and N digit(s) after.

Date and time

PTimeSpan

Represents a time interval that's independent of date and time of day.

Internally uses .NET's System.TimeSpan and it's stored as the number of ticks.

A tick is 100 nanoseconds or one ten-millionth of a second.

It ranges from -9,223,372,036,854,775,808 ticks to 9,223,372,036,854,775,807 ticks which corresponds to slightly more than negative 10,675,199 days to slightly more than 10,675,199 days.

Roundtrip format is [-]d.hh:mm:ss.fffffff, where

• d = number of whole days
• hh = 2 digit number of whole hours in the time interval that aren't counted as part of days
• mm = 2 digit number of whole minutes in the time interval that aren't included as part of hours or days
• ss = 2 digit number of whole seconds in the time interval that aren't included as part of hours, days, or minutes
• fffffff = ten-millionths of a second (or the fractional ticks) in a time interval

Example: "10675199.02:48:05.4775807"

PDateTime

Represents an instant in time, typically expressed as a date and time of day.

Internally uses .NET's System.DateTime, but unlike System.DateTime, it truncates seconds, miliseconds and offset.

It ranges from 1/1/0001 12:00 AM to 12/31/9999 11:59 PM (in the Gregorian calendar).

Roundtrip format is yyyy-MM-ddThh:mm:ss.fffffff, where

• yyyy = 4 digit year
• MM = 2 digit month
• dd = 2 digit day
• hh = 2 digit hours
• mm = 2 digit minutes
• ss = digit seconds
• fffffff = ten-millionth of a second

Example: "9999-12-31T23:59:59.9999999"

PDateTimeOffset

Represents a point in time, typically expressed as a date and time of day, relative to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).

Internally uses .NET's System.DateTimeOffset, but unlike System.DateTimeOffset, it truncates seconds and miliseconds.

It ranges from 1/1/0001 12:00 AM +00:00 to 12/31/9999 11:59 PM +00:00. Valid offsets are -12:00 to +14:00 as long as they don't exceed the minimum and maximum value above.

Roundtrip format is yyyy-MM-ddThh:mm:ss.fffffff[+|-]zzz, where

• yyyy = 4 digit year
• MM = 2 digit month
• dd = 2 digit day
• hh = 2 digit hours
• mm = 2 digit minutes
• ss = digit seconds
• fffffff = ten-millionth of a second
• zzz = timezone offset from UTC, measured in hours and minutes (hh:mm)

Example: "9999-12-31T23:59:59.9999999+00:00"

Strings and characters

Referential types

Represents a link between an attribute value and an entity such as an image or product in PIM.

In the database mapping, referential types are stored in a column with a foreign key constraint ensuring referential integrity.

Referential types are based on PGuid and PInt32.

Other types

Segmented types

A segmented type represents a single logical value consisting of multiple values segmented by a segmentation key.

Segmented types are built on top of basic types.

Translation culture

Types that are segmented on translation culture.

Device

Types that are segmented on device.

Channel

Types that are segmented on channel.

Market

Types that are segmented on market.