I'm not certain on other databases implementation, but generally I use a NUMBER field on Oracle which is being generated in labkey as a Float. (which makes sense, as a NUMBER field can be a float in oracle - but I know this particular field will never be a float)..

Im thinking that the answer is in the metadata? But am having trouble getting it to work.

I have seen the xml doco: https://www.labkey.org/download/schema-docs/xml-schemas/schemas/tableInfo_xsd/elements/datatype.html

which says: The name of the SQL datatype of this column as would be specified in a CREATE TABLE statement.

but when I try specifying a different datatype it doesn't seem to make any difference. Possibly my syntax is way off?

<ns:tables xmlns:ns="http://labkey.org/data/xml">  <ns:table tableName="specimen" tableDbType="NOT_IN_DB">    <ns:columns>      <ns:column columnName="SPECIMEN_ID">        <ns:datatype>INT</ns:datatype>        <ns:description>dfgdgfgdfgdfgd</ns:description>      </ns:column>    </ns:columns>  </ns:table> </ns:tables>