Data type differences between Amazon Redshift and supported PostgreSQL and MySQL databases - Amazon Redshift
Services or capabilities described in Amazon Web Services documentation might vary by Region. To see the differences applicable to the China Regions, see Getting Started with Amazon Web Services in China (PDF).

Data type differences between Amazon Redshift and supported PostgreSQL and MySQL databases

The following table shows the mapping of an Amazon Redshift data type to a corresponding Amazon RDS PostgreSQL or Aurora PostgreSQL data type.

Amazon Redshift data type RDS PostgreSQL or Aurora PostgreSQL data type Description
SMALLINT SMALLINT Signed two-byte integer
INTEGER INTEGER Signed four-byte integer
BIGINT BIGINT Signed eight-byte integer
DECIMAL DECIMAL Exact numeric of selectable precision
REAL REAL Single precision floating-point number
DOUBLE PRECISION DOUBLE PRECISION Double precision floating-point number
BOOLEAN BOOLEAN Logical Boolean (true/false)
CHAR CHAR Fixed-length character string
VARCHAR VARCHAR Variable-length character string with a user-defined limit
DATE DATE Calendar date (year, month, day)
TIMESTAMP TIMESTAMP Date and time (without time zone)
TIMESTAMPTZ TIMESTAMPTZ Date and time (with time zone)
GEOMETRY PostGIS GEOMETRY Spatial data

The following RDS PostgreSQL and Aurora PostgreSQL data types are converted to VARCHAR(64K) in Amazon Redshift:

  • JSON, JSONB

  • Arrays

  • BIT, BIT VARYING

  • BYTEA

  • Composite types

  • Date and time types INTERVAL, TIME, TIME WITH TIMEZONE

  • Enumerated types

  • Monetary types

  • Network address types

  • Numeric types SERIAL, BIGSERIAL, SMALLSERIAL, and MONEY

  • Object identifier types

  • pg_lsn type

  • Pseudotypes

  • Range types

  • Text search types

  • TXID_SNAPSHOT

  • UUID

  • XML type

The following table shows the mapping of an Amazon Redshift data type to a corresponding Amazon RDS MySQL or Aurora MySQL data type.

Amazon Redshift data type RDS MySQL or Aurora MySQL data type Description
BOOLEAN TINYINT(1) Logical Boolean (true or false)
SMALLINT TINYINT(UNSIGNED) Signed two-byte integer
SMALLINT SMALLINT Signed two-byte integer
INTEGER SMALLINT UNSIGNED Signed four-byte integer
INTEGER MEDIUMINT (UNSIGNED) Signed four-byte integer
INTEGER INT Signed four-byte integer
BIGINT INT UNSIGNED Signed eight-byte integer
BIGINT BIGINT Signed eight-byte integer
DECIMAL BIGINT UNSIGNED Exact numeric of selectable precision
DECIMAL DECIMAL(M,D) Exact numeric of selectable precision
REAL FLOAT Single precision floating-point number
DOUBLE PRECISION DOUBLE Double precision floating-point number
CHAR CHAR Fixed-length character string
VARCHAR VARCHAR Variable-length character string with a user-defined limit
DATE DATE Calendar date (year, month, day)
TIME TIME Time (without time zone)
TIMESTAMP TIMESTAMP Date and time (without time zone)
TIMESTAMP DATETIME Time (without time zone)
VARCHAR(4) YEAR Variable length character representing year

An error results when TIME data is out of range (00:00:00 – 24:00:00).

The following RDS MySQL and Aurora MySQL data types are converted to VARCHAR(64K) in Amazon Redshift:

  • BIT

  • BINARY

  • VARBINARY

  • TINYBLOB, BLOB, MEDIUMBLOB, LONGBLOB

  • TINYTEXT, TEXT, MEDIUMTEXT, LONGTEXT

  • ENUM

  • SET

  • SPATIAL