Data type : An Overview

A ‘data type’ is an attribute which specifies that type of data a column, variable, expression and parameter can hold.

Microsoft SQL Server supplies a set of system data types. It defines all the types of data.

Example: integer data, character data, monetary data, date and time data, binary strings etc.

You can categories these ‘data types’ as follows:

1.   Numeric – bigint, numeric, bit, smallint, decimal, smallmoney, int, tinyint, money

2.   Approx Numeric-float, real

3.   Date and time-date,datetimeoffset,datetime2,smalldatetime,datetime,time

4.   Character strings- char, varchar, text

5.   Unicode character strings- nchar, nvarchar, ntext

6.   Binary character strings-binary, varbinary, image

7.   Other data types- cursor, timestamp, hierachyid, uniqueidentifier, sql_variant, xml , table

8.   Spatial – Geometry, Geography