Field data types
A property of every field is its data type. A field's data type determines the type of data that the field can contain. A good understanding of data types is necessary for defining fields and for most things that applications do with fields.
The following table summarizes the data types available in IBM® Maximo® Real Estate and Facilities. The description of each data type includes a discussion of what is involved in specifying a field with that type. Most fields have the usual properties described in Field properties. Only additional properties or properties that are somehow different will be described.
| Data type | Description | Suffix |
|---|---|---|
| Binary | Used to contain an arbitrary sequence of bytes that the platform cannot directly manipulate. | BI |
| Boolean | Used to contain a value that is either true or false. | BL |
| Business object | Used to associate a Location, Organization, or Geography with a record. | BO |
| Classification | Used to contain a value selected from a defined hierarchy of values. | CL |
| Classification rollup | Used for rolling up sums by classification. | CR |
| Color | Used to contain a color. | CO |
| Control number | Used to generate and contain unique ID numbers. | CN |
| Date | Used to contain a date. | DA |
| Date and time | Used to contain a time and date combination. | DT |
| Duration | Used to contain the length of a time interval. | DU |
| Financial rollup | Used to contain totals from other fields involved in financial transactions. | FR |
| Image | Used to contain an image. | IM |
| Label only | Used to specify a label with no corresponding field. | LA |
| List | Used to select a value from a list of values. | LI |
| Note | Used to contain arbitrary length formatted text. | NO |
| Number | Used to contain numbers. | NU |
| Password | Used to contain a text value that can be modified but not displayed in a user interface. | PA |
| System read only | Used to access information about a record and the business object used to create it. | SY |
| Text | Used to contain text values | TX |
| Time | Used to contain a time of day | TI |
| UOM | Used to contain a Unit of Measure | UO |
| Url | Used to contain a URL | UR |