One of the pieces of a field description is the TYPE. The TYPE information denotes what data type the field is. Data types include integer, real, character, date-time, and a few others. In addition to the type a size is frequently given. For example, C8 maps to an 8 character string; I4 maps to a 4 byte integer; R8 is an 8 byte floating point number, etc.
For popular data fields that are repeated over many relations, we have set up canned user types that replace the default primitive types described above. These data types are described in one place and are refereced everywhere else. We do this to minimize/localize the impacts of field data type changes and to simplify the work in writing field descriptions. Cannned types can be accessed below.
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