question about data types for task id values

[elray1]

Our current schema suggests that some task id values might accept multiple data types, e.g. scenario_id lists both "integer" and "string" here.

I had some questions about this:

• How are we using these data types?
  • It seems possible/likely that this is only being used to validate that the hub has specified its tasks.json file correctly.
  • If I set up a hub where the scenario_id has an integer data type, will that column of model outputs be converted to an integer when I read in some model outputs? Would we want to do this?
  • If I set up a hub where the scenario_id has integer data type, do we expect validations to throw an error if a model submission has encoded the value as "1" instead of 1, either via a data type specification in a parquet file or (possibly?) via quoting values in a csv file? Would we want to do this? (I think the quoting values in csv files is pretty iffy, that's not really a data type specification so much as a csv formatting thing...)

I am basically wondering if the data type that shows up in a hub's tasks.json file for values of task id variables matters or should matter for downstream processing?

[annakrystalli]

Feels like a good question for the broader group. Should we add it to the next meeting's agenda?