IBM FileNet P8, Version 5.2.1            

Data types

Workflow system supports specific simple and composite data types.

Simple data types

Workflow system supports literals and variables of the following simple data types:

Integer

This data type is a numerical quantity that represents values that are always exact and integral. An integer value can consist of an optional + or - sign followed by a sequence of digits in the range -2147483648 through 2147483647.

Tip: Workflow system implicitly converts integer values to float values under certain circumstances.

Normal, simple arithmetic operations are available for integer values.

String

This data type is a sequence of zero or more characters. A string can be up to approximately 1,000,000 characters long.

Tip: This length applies to internally stored values of the string data type; the range does not apply to the string literals that are entered the client applications.

Many normal string operations, such as concatenation, substring, and substring search are available. 'C' style escape sequences are not available; instead, use the function hex.

Boolean

This data type represents a logical quantity that is the answer to a true-or-false question. The range of values is true and false only. Normal logical operations (and, or, not) are available for Boolean values.

Tip: The Boolean values true and false are case-sensitive; these values are valid in lowercase only.

In most cases, false evaluates to a lesser value than true; the only exception is in sort rule expressions, where true evaluates a lesser value than false.

Workflow system does not support implicit conversions to the Boolean data type; only the values true and false are acceptable. You can, however, use the convert function for an explicit conversion (for example, to put a value of another data type into a Boolean data field).

Note that for user-defined applications developed in environments which do not have true Boolean values (such as 'C' and Visual Basic), all non-zero values evaluate to true and a value of zero evaluates to false.

Float
This data type is a numerical quantity that represents values which can be non-integral. Float values are usually represented approximately. The float data type has a binary internal representation (not decimal) and is an IEEE standard double.
Workflow system can store a float value that is equal to 0, or is in the following range:
  • approximately 2.2250738585072014e-308 ≤|x|≤ approximately 1.7976931348623157e308.

Normal, simple arithmetic operations are available for float values.

Note: How a float value displays to the user depends on the application the user is looking at. The Process applications display float values based on the locale of the user's client machine.
Tip: Workflow system implicitly converts float values to integer values under certain circumstances.
Time
Time represents a date and time, accurate to the second. The values are displayed in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).
Table 1. Min and max values for Time
Data type Minimum Maximum
Time August 16, 1906 21:26:41 December 1, 9999 12:00:00

Available operations include converting to and from strings, adding and subtracting quantities (such as months) and getting the current system time. In conversions between the string and time data types, string representations of time values are formatted according to a template called a date/time mask. Internally, however, workflow system stores time values as integers. When comparing time values, workflow system compares the internal integer values rather than any string representations of those time values.

Note: How the current time displays to the user depends on the application the user is looking at. The Process applications display time values based on the locale of the user's client machine.

Composite data types

Workflow system supports single-dimensional arrays for all of the supported simple data types. Array support is based on the application development environment.

An array is a list of one or more elements of a uniform type indexed by an integer (starting with 1). You must specify an initial value for at least one array element when declaring an array.

Arrays automatically adjust their size to contain all current elements; for example, if an array currently contains three elements and you assign a value to the seventh element, the array resizes to include elements 4, 5, and 6 as well. Elements that are added to an array during automatic resizing are assigned the appropriate value, based on the following table.

The values are:
Table 2. Table of values assigned to elements of an array during automatic resizing
Data type Value
integer 0
string <blank> or ""
Boolean true
float 0.0
time <today's date and time> (for example, 4/28/00 9:18 AM)

Index values start at 1; you can put approximately 256,000 elements into an array. Available operations include indexing and taking the current size of an array. Note that the above-listed maximum size applies to internally stored arrays. The maximum size might not apply to arrays being passed to and from workflow system through API calls.



Last updated: October 2015
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