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Is there any difference in meaning between "Many different data source types" and "Many different types of data sources"?

I have no strong understanding on the use of "of".

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I could swear I've seen a very similar question before, but I can't find it right now. – RegDwighт♦ May 28 '11 at 11:59

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As an IT person, I feel the whole construct is wrong. There are different data types, e.g. text, date, integer, decimal, boolean, etc. (This list is not complete). Then there are different data sources, e.g. SQL database, Oracle database, spreadsheet, tab delimited file, CSV, etc. (This list is also not complete).

So, in my world, there are many different data sources, and in each data source, there can be many different data types.

"Data source type" is at best synonymous with "data source" if you want to distinguish between different possible data sources.

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And the different data sources can be categorized into groups: flat files, relational databases, object databases, etc. And these groups could equally be called "types". But you're right on about data source types being data types (the ones used in the database, as opposed to the ones supported by a programming language). – Ben Voigt May 28 '11 at 18:41

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