.Stat Suite documentation

Textual attribute values length

Version history:
Deprecated MAXTEXTATTRIBUTELENGTH annotation and updated rules for maxlength SDMX property since March 31, 2025 Release .Stat Suite .NET ‘icecream’
Released in January 28, 2020 Release .Stat Suite .NET v2.3.0

IMPORTANT update March 31, 2025: The MAXTEXTATTRIBUTELENGTH SDMX annotation has been deprecated and is not used anymore by .Stat CORE to define the related SQL storage sizes for non-coded textual attributes, and to check the length of their imported values against this maximum limit.
Instead, the system is using now the maxLength SDMX property of the attribute’s local string-type representation in the DSD.
This change is backward-compatible in the sense that the system will maintain the current SQL storage size and maximum text length of attributes for previously defined DSDs. The change applies only to new DSDs. If maxLength is not defined for those, then the system will use the comfortable but performance-impacting default limit of 4000 characters.
Therefore, systematically using appropriate attribute-specific maxLength SDMX properties, which reflect the real needs for their values, allows optimizing the database storage and thus the system performance in a very significant manner.

System warnings and errors:

  • The system will return a warning message when uploading data for text attributes that have no maxLength defined;
  • A notice will be displayed when a new, larger maxLength is applied to existing data.
  • If an attribute value exceeds its defined maxLength, the system will return an error during import.

Example of a DSD syntax with maxLength defined:

    <structure:DataStructures>
      <structure:DataStructure id="DSD_TEST" agencyID="OECD" version="1.0" isFinal="true">
        <common:Name xml:lang="en">DSD for testing maxlength for String type</common:Name>
        <structure:DataStructureComponents>
          <structure:DimensionList>
          </structure:DimensionList>
          <structure:AttributeList>
            <structure:Attribute id="TS_ATTR" assignmentStatus="Conditional">
              <structure:ConceptIdentity>
                <Ref id="TS_ATTR" maintainableParentID="CS_TEST" maintainableParentVersion="1.0" agencyID="OECD" package="conceptscheme" class="Concept" />
              </structure:ConceptIdentity>
              <structure:LocalRepresentation>
                <structure:TextFormat maxLength="5000" textType="String" />
              </structure:LocalRepresentation>
              <structure:AttributeRelationship>
                <structure:Dimension>
                  <Ref id="DIM_1" />
                </structure:Dimension>
              </structure:AttributeRelationship>
            </structure:Attribute>
          </structure:AttributeList>
        </structure:DataStructureComponents>
      </structure:DataStructure>