Implicit Conversion Support Range

Currently, DataArts Fabric SQL supports implicit conversion of numeric types for tables stored in ORC or Parquet formats. This means that types with larger storage byte sizes are backward compatible with those having smaller storage byte sizes.

For example, if the actual storage is orc::SHORT (2 bytes), queries will function normally whether the table type is defined as SMALLINT, INT, or BIGINT. Below is the current support range for implicit conversions in DataArts Fabric SQL.

**Table 1** Supported range for numeric type implicit conversions in DataArts Fabric SQL
Numeric Type Implicit Conversion in DataArts Fabric SQL	SMALLINT	INT	BIGINT	FLOAT4	FLOAT8	NUMERIC
orc::byte/parquet::INT8 to	√	√	√	×	×	×
orc::short/parquet::INT16 to	√	√	√	×	×	×
orc::int/parquet::INT32 to	×	√	√	×	×	×
orc::long/parquet::INT64 to	×	×	√	×	×	×
orc::float/parquet::32 to	×	×	×	√	×	×
orc::double/parquet::64 to	×	×	×	×	√	×
orc::decimal/parquet::decimal to	×	×	×	×	×	√