Configure Property Data Types
The data type of a property determines the type of data that the property can contain. This makes storage of the data most efficient, but it prevents other data types from being saved in the property. Meridian supports the major data types used by most modern database management systems. The string, integer, date/time, and memo data types will serve most purposes.
You can configure the data type of a property only when creating the property. It is important that you choose the correct data type carefully. If you create a property with the wrong data type and it already contains data for many objects, you can try this workaround: Create a new property with the correct data type. Migrate the data from the original property to the new property. The Set Property Value command in PowerUser is useful for this. Then delete the original property definition. This requires that you match the property validation and value assignments, update property pages and reports manually, and update all references to the original property name in VBScript.
To configure a property’s data type, select a data type from the Type list at the time of property creation. The different types are described in the following table.
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
|
String |
Text up to 255 characters |
|
Byte |
Integer in the range 0 to 255 |
|
Integer |
Integer in the range –32,768 to 32,767 |
|
Long Integer |
Integer in the range 2,147,483,648 to 2,147,483,647 |
|
Single Float |
Single-precision floating-point number |
|
Double Float |
Double-precision floating-point number |
|
Boolean |
True or False |
|
Date/Time |
Date between January 1, 100 to December 31, 9999 |
|
Currency |
Between -92,337,203,685,477.5808 and 92,337,203,685,477.5807 |
|
Memo |
Up to 32 KB of plain text. Important!
PowerWeb is limited to sending a total of 24 KB of data when properties are edited. This limit can be exceeded if the document type includes a large number of text properties or one or more memo properties that contain a lot of data. When this occurs, users will be shown an Invalid arguments error and their changes in some properties may not be saved correctly. Therefore, the practical limit of memo properties is 24 KB of data or less if the PowerWeb client will be deployed to users and these properties should be used with caution. |
Unless you need to perform mathematical calculations on a number, use the string data type even for numbers if the value in a property will be concatenated with string values from other properties in VBScript. This prevents the need to convert the numeric data into an equivalent string. The string data type is also the most flexible and can serve the most purposes, whereas other data types are less flexible. If you use a different data type, you may discover later that it is too limiting. You can often achieve the same data validation that a more restrictive data type offers by configuring the Validation options for a string value.
