It can represent the largest possible precision of the various numeric data types. Because it’s an integer, it has no digits to the right of the decimal place.
Whole Number – Represents a 64 bit (eight-byte) integer value. The Fixed Decimal Number data type is specified in TOM as DataType.Decimal Enum type 1. If you’re familiar with SQL Server, this data type corresponds to SQL Server’s Decimal (19,4), or the Currency data type in Analysis Services and Power Pivot in Excel. Since the values past the four digits to the right of decimal separator are truncated, the Fixed Decimal type can help you avoid these kinds of errors. When you work with many numbers that have small fractional values, they can sometimes accumulate and force a number to be slightly off. The Fixed Decimal Number type is useful in cases where rounding might introduce errors. The decimal separator always has four digits to its right and allows for 19 digits of significance. The Decimal Number data type is specified in the Tabular Object Model (TOM) as DataType.Double Enum type 1.įixed Decimal Number – Has a fixed location for the decimal separator. The Decimal Number type corresponds to how Excel stores its numbers. The decimal separator can occur anywhere in the number. The largest precision that can be represented in a Decimal Number type is 15 digits long. For example, numbers like 34, 34.01, and 34.000367063 are valid decimal numbers. The Decimal Number type can handle negative values from -1.79E +308 through -2.23E -308, 0, and positive values from 2.23E -308 through 1.79E + 308. Although designed to handle numbers with fractional values, it also handles whole numbers. It’s the most common number type and corresponds to numbers as you usually think of them. Power BI Desktop supports three number types:ĭecimal Number – Represents a 64 bit (eight-byte) floating point number. It exists in the Data View and Report View menus for legacy reasons but if you try to load binary columns to the Power BI model you may run into errors. Inside the Power Query Editor you can use it when loading binary files if you convert it to other data types before loading it to the Power BI model. The Binary data type is not currently supported outside of the Power Query Editor. When a column with these data types is loaded into the model and viewed in Data or Report view, a column with a Date/Time/Timezone data type will be converted into a Date/Time, and a column with a Duration data type is converted into a Decimal Number. The Data Type drop down in Power Query Editor has two data types not currently present in Data or Report View: Date/Time/Timezone and Duration.
In Power BI Desktop, you can determine and specify a column’s data type in the Power Query Editor, or in Data View or Report View: Determine and specify a column’s data type
Implicit conversions are described later in this article.
So, it’s both important and useful to get the correct data type for a column. For instance, if a DAX function requires a Date data type and the data type for your column is Text, the DAX function will not work correctly. While in many cases DAX will implicitly convert a data type for you, there are some cases where it will not. This concept is important because some DAX functions have special data type requirements. For example, if a column of values you import from Excel has no fractional values, Power BI Desktop will convert the entire column of data to a Whole Number data type, which is better suited for storing integers. When you load data into Power BI Desktop, it will attempt to convert the data type of the source column into a data type that better supports more efficient storage, calculations, and data visualization. This article describes data types supported in Power BI Desktop and Data Analysis Expressions (DAX).