Idea by marko · Jan 05, 2016 at 10:24 AM · sql server attributes attribute handling

SQL Server writer Varchar as default

Writing to SQL Server can be frustrating if you don't pay attention to the attribute types. Generally Varchar is needed as any whitespace may cause issues with styling data in Arcmap or other GIS programs. The default character type should change to reflect the best types for any given writer.

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radochudy commented · Jun 01, 2017 at 03:32 PM

I have small recomendation. If you plan to use Geoserver for data publishing I realy recommend to use nvarchar instead varchar. Varchar makes strange things in geoserver,mostly using in SLD or CQL filters...

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svasa76 commented · Jul 06, 2016 at 12:13 PM

Yay, finally got 2016.1 two hours ago! There is varchar datatype, right, but why can't I delete the numer in the width field? Does it give the max number of characters? And what can I do if I don't want to give a max length? Thanks for your help...

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markatsafe commented · Mar 04, 2016 at 11:12 PM

This has been addressed in FME 2016.1. By default mapping will be to varchar whereever possible

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daleatsafe commented · Jan 05, 2016 at 09:23 PM

Thanks for pointing out a very old default that is hardcoded in workbench. WIth time we are trying to make Workbench much smarter with data types in general, but in the very short term (2016.1) we will change this default to varchar which will be so much smarter on most modern systems.

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daleatsafe ♦♦ · Jan 05, 2016 at 09:24 PM 0

Being able to adjust the default is a great idea too, we'll think more deeply on that.

erik_jan · Jan 05, 2016 at 09:51 PM 0

And to Varchar2 for Oracle, please!

marko · Jan 07, 2016 at 10:38 AM 0

Great, looking forward to 2016 release!

erik_jan commented · Jan 05, 2016 at 07:19 PM

I would suggest in every location that FME now decides what datatype to use. So if the datatype is not predefined in the database (new writer or new featuretype) the default should be used.

The precision could be defined by the data, but I have experienced quite often that the precision is defined by the first x number of rows and is not sufficient for the complete dataset.

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ravenkopelman commented · Jan 05, 2016 at 06:22 PM

What context do you see this default in? When generating a new workspace that translates from format X to SQL Server, or when manually adding writer feature types?

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revesz · Feb 03, 2016 at 02:14 PM 1

char(x) is the default when a string attribute value is calculated, it is from a web service, (maybe from CSV) and similar situations when FME just guesses the data type.

erik_jan commented · Jan 05, 2016 at 05:00 PM

The nicest way to do this is using the FME options and being able to set up the default datatype per Writer for character and numeric attributes. You could even add a default precision per datatype (e.g Oracle character: Varchar2(20), numeric: Number(38,0) ).

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erik_jan commented · Jan 05, 2016 at 02:58 PM

I second this.

For Oracle too the Varchar2 type is highly recommended over the default Char type as the Char type appends spaces to the actual value.

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SQL Server writer Varchar as default

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