Format overview

All data is a series of byte sequences and has an associated data type, used as a conceptual or abstract attribute of the data. Without an associated data type, a byte sequence can be interpreted in numerous ways.

A single data type can be represented in different forms. For example, an integer data type can be represented by or stored in various types of binary format or in human-readable text or character format (typically, ASCII). Similarly, dates, times, and other data types have multiple representations that are used by different programs, languages, and environments. At some point, though, these data types must be represented in readable form so that users can do something with the data. Data for loading into the data warehouse typically is presented in either delimited format or fixed-length format by using either ASCII or UTF-8.