Setting Field Name and Data Type

Field Name

The Field Name is a descriptive identifier for a field that can be up to 64 characters (letters or numbers) including spaces. The names should be descriptive enough that anyone can easily identify them when viewing or editing records. For example, LastName, FirstName, StreetAddress, or HomePhone.

Use the Name edit box to set the field name. Note that the name of the field must be unique among all the field names in the table.

The Type dropdown list defines the type (storage class) of the field data.

The following tables summarize each type:

Type Description
INTEGER The value is a signed integer, stored in 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, or 8 bytes depending on the magnitude of the value.
REAL The value is a floating point value, stored as an 8-byte IEEE floating point number.
TEXT The value is a text string, stored using the database encoding (UTF-8, UTF-16BE or UTF-16LE).
BLOB The value is a blob of data, stored exactly as it was input.

Note for SQLite Version 2:

  1. You can store any kind of data you want in any column of any table, regardless of the declared datatype of that column.
Click here for detailed description on datatype in SQLite version 2.

Note for SQLite Version 3:

  1. Storage class is slightly more general than a datatype. The INTEGER storage class, for example, includes 6 different integer datatypes of different lengths.
  2. In order to maximize compatibility between SQLite and other database engines, SQLite supports the concept of "type affinity" on columns.
Click here for detailed description on datatype, storage class and type affinity.