SciDB supports the following data types. You can access this list by using list('types') at the AFL command line.

The following data types are available from the timeseries library, available in the Enterprise Edition. 

Each of the Paradigm4 data types supports only those operations that make sense for that type. For example, you cannot add two dates together, but you can add a date and an interval, yielding a later date (or an earlier one, if the value of the interval is negative). Likewise, you can subtract one interval from another, yielding an interval.

The following are acceptable formats for the SciDB datatypes datetime and datetimetz. These tokens represent portions of the date and time:
 

• MON. Three-character month name: Jan, Feb, Mar, and so on. The three-character month name is case insensitive—any combination of lowercase and uppercase letters is acceptable.

• mm. Month number: 01 for January, 02 for February, and so on. Note that you can omit the leading 0.

• yyyy. Four-digit year. If you specify a 2-digit year, SciDB prepends '20'. So, for years in the twenty first century, you need only use 2-digits to represent the year.

• hour. Hour of the day. Can be 12- or 24-hour time

• min. Minutes

• sec. Seconds

• frac. Fractional portion of a second; you can specify as many digits as you like

• AMPM. For one of the acceptable syntaxes, you must specify 'AM' or 'PM', to indicate the period of the day.

For the datetimetz datatype, you can use any of the following syntaxes, where the offset (OFF) is between -13:59 and +13:59.

To specify date/time values in SciDB, do the following:

1. Create arrays to hold date/time information.

   $ iquery -a AFL% create array datetime1 <dt:datetime>[i=0:*]; Query was executed successfully AFL% create array datetime2 <dtz:datetimetz>[i=0:*]; Query was executed successfully AFL% exit; $

2. Load the datetime1 array with data from the comma-separated-value file /tmp/dates.csv:

   $ cat /tmp/dates.csv 11/25/2009 16:11:19 25.11.2009 16:11:19 2009-11-25 16:11:19.7612 2009-11-25 16.11.19.76 2009-11-25 16.11.19 2009-11-25 16:11:19 11/25/2009 16:11 25.11.2009 16:11 2009-11-25 16:11 25Nov2009:16:11:19 25-Nov-2009 4.11.19 PM 25-Nov-2009 4.11.19 AM 2009-11-25 11/25/2009 25.11.2009

3. Use the load operator to load these dates into the datetime1 array:

   $ iquery -aq "load(datetime1, '/tmp/dates.csv', -2, 'csv')" {i} dt {0} '2009-11-25 16:11:19' {1} '2009-11-25 16:11:19' {2} '2009-11-25 16:11:19' {3} '2009-11-25 16:11:19' {4} '2009-11-25 16:11:19' {5} '2009-11-25 16:11:19' {6} '2009-11-25 16:11:00' {7} '2009-11-25 16:11:00' {8} '2009-11-25 16:11:00' {9} '2009-11-25 16:11:19' {10} '2009-11-25 16:11:19' {11} '2009-11-25 04:11:19' {12} '2009-11-25 00:00:00' {13} '2009-11-25 00:00:00' {14} '2009-11-25 00:00:00'

4. Load the datetime2 array with data from the comma-separated-value file /tmp/dates-with-timezones.csv:

   $ cat /tmp/dates-with-timezones.csv 11/25/2009 16:11:19 +10:01 25.11.2009 16:11:19 +09:02 2009-11-25 16:11:19.76 +08:03 2009-11-25 16.11.19.76 +07:04 2009-11-25 16.11.19 +06:05 2009-11-25 16:11:19 +05:06 25-Nov-2009 4.11.19 PM +00:11

5. Use the load operator to load these dates into the datetime2 array:

   $ iquery -aq "load(datetime2, '/tmp/dates-with-timezones.csv', -2, 'csv')" {i} dtz {0} '2009-11-25 16:11:19 +10:01' {1} '2009-11-25 16:11:19 +09:02' {2} '2009-11-25 16:11:19 +08:03' {3} '2009-11-25 16:11:19 +07:04' {4} '2009-11-25 16:11:19 +06:05' {5} '2009-11-25 16:11:19 +05:06' {6} '2009-11-25 16:11:19 +00:11'

6. Remove the arrays.

   $ iquery -aq "remove(datetime1); remove(datetime2)"