Explaining the PDI data types

Data types are part of the metadata and are mandatory. Every field in a PDI dataset must have a data type. You have already used some of the most common data types, namely String, Date, and Integer, but the full available list of supported data types is a bit longer. The following table summarizes them all:

As you can see in the preceding table, each PDI data type has its correspondent data type in Java (recall that PDI is implemented in Java).

You don't have to worry about the Java data type unless you use the User Defined Java Class step or create advanced expressions in the UDJE step. You will learn more about this in a dedicated chapter.