SMALLINT Data Type

A 2-byte integer data type used in CREATE TABLE and ALTER TABLE statements.

Syntax:

In the column definition of a CREATE TABLE statement:

column_name SMALLINT

Range: -32768 .. 32767. There is no UNSIGNED subtype.

Conversions: Impala automatically converts to a larger integer type (INT or BIGINT) or a floating-point type (FLOAT or DOUBLE) automatically. Use CAST() to convert to TINYINT, STRING, or TIMESTAMP. Casting an integer or floating-point value N to TIMESTAMP produces a value that is N seconds past the start of the epoch date (January 1, 1970). By default, the result value represents a date and time in the UTC time zone. If the setting -use_local_tz_for_unix_timestamp_conversions=true is in effect, the resulting TIMESTAMP represents a date and time in the local time zone.

Usage notes:

For a convenient and automated way to check the bounds of the SMALLINT type, call the functions MIN_SMALLINT() and MAX_SMALLINT().

If an integer value is too large to be represented as a SMALLINT, use an INT instead.

NULL considerations: Casting any non-numeric value to this type produces a NULL value.

Examples:

CREATE TABLE t1 (x SMALLINT);
SELECT CAST(1000 AS SMALLINT);

Parquet considerations:

Physically, Parquet files represent TINYINT and SMALLINT values as 32-bit integers. Although Impala rejects attempts to insert out-of-range values into such columns, if you create a new table with the CREATE TABLE ... LIKE PARQUET syntax, any TINYINT or SMALLINT columns in the original table turn into INT columns in the new table.

Partitioning: Prefer to use this type for a partition key column. Impala can process the numeric type more efficiently than a STRING representation of the value.

HBase considerations: This data type is fully compatible with HBase tables.

Text table considerations: Values of this type are potentially larger in text tables than in tables using Parquet or other binary formats.

Internal details: Represented in memory as a 2-byte value.

Added in: Available in all versions of Impala.

Column statistics considerations: Because this type has a fixed size, the maximum and average size fields are always filled in for column statistics, even before you run the COMPUTE STATS statement.

Related information:

Numeric Literals, TINYINT Data Type, SMALLINT Data Type, INT Data Type, BIGINT Data Type, DECIMAL Data Type, Impala Mathematical Functions