Map and dictionary data types

Question

what is the differance between map & dictonary data types. 
 when we will get this map type and dictionary type

balti · Accepted Answer

Inside of a map, each key has an associated value and that value's type is preserved , the values stored in a map are not wrapped in variants while a dictionary wraps a variant AnyType around each value in the dictionary . Map makes it much easier to get values back out of maps by indexing, without having to worry about type casting. There are no advantages to using dictionaries; prefer using maps over dictionaries where possible. docs.appian.com/.../fnc_system_map.html As per your second part of the question it depends on how you are manipulating your data, some function returns map for ex a!queryRecordType() returns a map.