Interpreting the type and type name of data formats in QGIS

Question

I am trying to wrap my head around storing attribute values in the most efficient way for a large shapefile (>1 000 000 records). I have found excellent descriptions of data representations in 8-bit, 16-bit as interger vs. float, etc (e.g. https://www3.ntu.edu.sg/home/ehchua/programming/java/datarepresentation.html). But I can't find the equivalencies between QGIS and standard names for those formats. Furthermore, QGIS uses different terms depending on the function to further complicate things. Does QGIS only support two integer formats : 32-bit and 64-bit? Are real numbers assigned to Float32 or Float64 based on the length and precision?

Formats that I have found as accessed from Properties and Source fields with the corresponding options from add field are:

• type/type name, selection from add field

• double/real, Decimal number (real) with less than 10 digits (32-bit?)

• double/double, Decimal number (real) with over 11 digits (64-bit?)

• int/integer, Whole number (integer) (8-bit? 16-bit?)

• qlonglong/integer64, Whole number (integer64)

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Raster format has the following options with fairly straight-forward translations between names and data types:

Answer 1

Thanks to the comments, I have come to understand how data is stored in vector formats (e.g. shapefiles). Most importantly, data values in vector and raster format are stored in completely different ways. Record attribute data is stored in the .dbf file associated with a shapefile uses the standard dbase file storage as explained here:

All fields values occupy the number of bytes specified in the field length property of their field descriptor.

Each record in each attribute (i.e. each field value) takes up the number of bits/bytes as set by the length of the attribute regardless of the number of characters/numbers in a given entry. The size is the same regardless of whether the entry has digits or letters. The only difference between a decimal and an integer in storage terms is that the "." counts as a character. Unlike raster format, there is not a sudden jump from the amount of space taken up by a number with 4 digits (16-bit) vs. 2 digits, less than 256 (8-bit) nor a difference between float and integer..

Based on the link that Joseph provided, I've made up the following table with the formats as QGIS calls them with the names OGR uses.

QVariant::LongLong -- OFTInteger64 -- ogrWidth 1-21
QVariant::Int      -- OFTInteger   -- ogrWidth 1-10
QVariant::String   -- OFTString    -- ogrWidth 1-255
QVariant::Bool     -- OFSTBoolean  -- ogrWidth = 1
QVariant::Double   -- OFTReal      -- ?
QVariant::Date     -- OFTDate      -- ?
QVariant::Time     -- OFTTime      -- ?
QVariant::DateTime -- OFTDateTime  -- ?

Each of the OGR field types is explained here, but mostly intuitive (real is Double Precision floating point and Integer is Simple 32bit integer).

The essentiel element to consider in minimizing the storage size that attribute data uses each to choose the minimum length for each attribute, as QGIS prompts us. So, don't overthink it!