Model Designer Data Types

The following information describes the different types of properties used in the object and collection definitions throughout the Report Model Designer section of Books Online. All data types appear in Semantic Model Definition Language (SMDL) as an element unless specified otherwise.

Type

Description

ID

A property with a value that globally uniquely identifies an object. If the name of the property is ID, this property appears in SMDL as an attribute. In all other instances, this property appears in SMDL as an element.

Object

A property whose structure is defined in the object definition topics.

String

A property with a string text value.

Name

A property with a string text value. Names must be unique within the namespace of the item. If not specified, the namespace for an item is the innermost containing object that has a name.

Integer

A property with an integer (int32) value.

Boolean

A property with true or false as the value of the object. Unless specified otherwise, the value of an omitted optional Boolean object is False.

Float

A property with a float value. A period (.) is used as the optional decimal separator.

Enum

A property with a string text value that must be one of a list of designated values.

Date

A property with a fully specified date or datetime value specified in ISO8601 date format: YYYY-MM-DD[THH:MM[:SS[.S]]].

Time

A property with a fully specified time value in ISO 8601 date format: HH:MM[:SS[.S]].

Language

A property with a text value that contains a language and culture code, such as "en-us" for US English. The value must either be a specific language or a neutral language for which a default language is defined in the Microsoft .NET Framework.

Binary

A property with a base-64 encoded binary value.

Variant

A property with any simple XML type.

EntityKey

A property with a base-64 encoded binary value that uniquely identifies an instance of an entity. An EntityKey is created from a composite of the key columns for the entity. The first byte is reserved and must equal zero. The first byte is followed by a binary serialization of the key columns in the table to which the entity or column is bound in their native types. Key columns are serialized in the order in which they are defined in the primary key list in the physical model.

DataType Enumeration

DataType Enumeration defines the data type of an attribute, expression, or parameter. A data type must conform to the following Report Model Designer property type and its corresponding common language runtime (CLR) types. Values from the database that have CLR types are treated as the corresponding Report Model Designer type.

CLR Type(s)

Corresponding Report Model Designer Type

Boolean

Boolean

DateTime, DataTime Offset

DateTime

Note: You can enter DateTime Offsets but Reporting Services automatically converts them to DateTime UTC values.

TimeSpan

Time

Int16, Int32, UInt16, Byte, SByte

Integer

Decimal, Int64, UInt32, UInt64

Decimal

Single, Double

Float

String, Char, GUID

String

Byte[]

Binary

None

EntityKey