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Data Types Reference [v5]

This reference guide enumerates each of the data types supported by Scuba, and explains how Scuba determines which data type to assign at ingest time.

Data types

These are the core data types you will see in the Scuba query UI.

Data Type

Aggregations

Grouping (Split By)

Filter Operators

Value Typeahead

Identifier

Count Unique, First, Last

Yes

matches/does not match
is empty/is not empty

No

Integer* / Decimal

Count Unique, First, Last, Min, Max, Sum, Average, Median, Percentile

Defaults to No, can be configured to Yes by admin

is one of/is not one of
is less than (<)
is greater than (>)
is less than or equal to (<=)
is greater than or equal to (>=)

No

Integer Set / Decimal Set

Defaults to No, can be configured to Yes by admin

matches/does not match [column/value]
is empty/is not empty

No

String

Count Unique, First, Last

Yes

matches/does not match
text contains/does not contain
starts with/does not start with
ends with/does not end with
is empty/is not empty
text matches regular expression

Yes

String Set

Count Unique

Yes

string value matches/does not match
set contains/does not contain text
starts with/does not start with
ends with/does not end with
is empty/is not empty
text matches regular expression

Yes

Time

Count Unique, First, Last, Min, Max, Sum, Average, Median, Percentile 

No

is one of, is not one of, is less than (<), is greater than (>), is less than or equal to (<=), is greater than or equal to (>=)

No

*Integers in Scuba are stored as 64-bit signed ints and so can only be a value from -(2^63) to 2^63 - 1.

Expansion types

You won't see these as being first-class data types in the Scuba query UI, but at ingest time we apply expansion rules based on these data types. 

Expansion Type

Data Type of Main Column

Generated Subcolumns

IP Address

String

city, region, country, continent

URL

N/A (not loaded into Scuba by default)

scheme, hostname, path, filename, query, params, fragment

User Agent

N/A (not loaded into Scuba)

browser, device, platform, browser_majorver, browser_minorver, browser_patchver

Ingest time auto-transformations

At ingest time, we automatically perform the following transformations on the raw JSON data before applying any data type recognition rules or expansions.

Transformation Rule

Original JSON

Resulting JSON

Flatten Nested JSON Objects

{"column": {"a": 1, "b": "xxx"}}

{"column.a": 1, "column.b": "xxx"}

Shred Arrays of JSON Objects

{"column": [{"a": 1,"b": "zzz"}, {"a": 2,"b": "yyy"}]}

{"column.a": [1,2], "column.b": ["zzz","yyy"]}

String column transformations

If you have a regular string column that includes only the letters a through h, Scuba will auto-detect it as an integer and convert it to base 10. For example, "funding_series" which has values like (a, b, c, d, e) might fall into this scenario.

Original data

Transformed into...

"1234"

Integer values

"abc123"

Integer (converted to base 10), for values up to 16 hex digits

"abcdef-124"

Identifier, for values of 17 digits or more. The value can include hyphens. 

Ingest Time Data Type Recognition Rules For JSON Number Columns

At ingest time, when we see a new column for the first time (and it is a JSON Number) we detect the data type of the new column using the following matching rules, in the precedence order listed below:

Parsing Rule

Raw Data

Data Type

Rule Details

Detect Time

{"abc" : 1448933490}

Time

Scuba will attempt to interpret JSON ints as epoch timestamps in one of (microseconds, milliseconds, seconds). 

Detect Integer

{"abc" : 12345}

Integer

Simple JSON ints are interpreted as Integers by Scuba.

Detect Decimal

{"abc" : 12345.98}

Decimal


Detect Integer Set

{"abc" : [12345, 245, 99834]}

Integer Set


Detect Decimal Set

{"abc" : [12345.98, 245.2, 99834]}

Decimal Set


Based on the order of precedence, if there is ambiguity about whether a column value can be interpreted as an epoch timestamp or an int, Scuba will interpret it as an epoch time value. 

Ingest time data type recognition rules for JSON string columns

At ingest time, when we see a new column for the first time (and it is a JSON String) we detect the data type of the new column using the following matching rules, in the precedence order listed below:

Parsing Rule

Raw Data

Data Type

Rule Details

Detect Time From JSON String

{"abc" : "2015-11-30 08:09:12"}

Time

Scuba will attempt to interpret JSON strings as timestamps using approximately 40 different format strings (including ISO-8601).  

Detect Identifier from JSON String

{"abc" : "e41249ed-2398-4c29-a6fa-ee81116dd302"}

Identifier

Scuba will attempt to interpret JSON strings containing 16 or more characters as hexadecimal identifiers, including some common uuid formats. Note that non-hex characters (like hyphens or dots) are stripped out of the resulting data.

Detect Integer From JSON String

{"abc" : "12345"}

Integer


Detect Decimal From JSON String

{"abc" : "12345.98"}

Decimal


Detect Decimal From JSON String With Dollar Sign

{"abc" : "$12,345.98"}

Decimal

Note that dollar signs and commas are stripped out of the resulting data.

Detect String Set

{"abc" : ["hello", "goodbye", "nice", "to", "see", "you"]}

String Set


Detect URL

{"abc" : "http://www.site.com/landing/"}

URL


Detect IP Address

{"abc" : "127.0.0.1"}

IP Address


Detect User Agent

{"abc" : "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_10_0)"}

User Agent

Scuba will attempt to interpret JSON strings as User Agents using a regex matching scheme.

If you have any questions, please reach out to help@scuba.io or your technical customer success manager (TCSM).

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