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Empowering Your Business Through Expert SQL Server Solutions

Published on

May 23, 2022

SQL Server Data Types: Choosing the Right Type for Your Data

When working with SQL Server, data types are an essential piece of the database puzzle. Understanding the available data types and how to use them effectively is crucial for both storing and retrieving data with optimal performance and accuracy. This article will delve deeper into the myriad of data types offered by SQL Server, offering you the knowledge to make informed decisions when designing your database.

Why Data Types Matter

Data types define the nature of the data that can be stored in a column of a table in a database. They enforce data integrity by ensuring that only appropriate types of data are stored in each column and influence the amount of space that the data occupies on the server; they also impact the database’s performance, size, and how SQL Server optimizes query data.

SQL Server’s Data Type Categories

SQL Server categorizes its data types into several groups based on the nature of the data they hold:

  • Exact Numerics: these data types store numeric values where precision and scale need to be precise, such as INT, BIGINT, DECIMAL, and NUMERIC.
  • Approximate Numerics: used for storing floating-point numbers that require large ranges of values, such as FLOAT and REAL.
  • Date and Time: to hold date and time values, with various levels of precision, including DATETIME and DATE.
  • Character Strings: including CHAR, VARCHAR, and text data types for storing various forms of text.
  • Unicode Character Strings: such as NCHAR and NVARCHAR, which are necessary for storing Unicode text for multiple language support.
  • Binary Strings: like BINARY and VARBINARY used to store binary data.
  • Other Data Types: like XML, JSON, spatial data types, and more used for specialized use cases.

Let’s take an in-depth exploration of each of these categories and pinpoint when and why particular data types should be chosen.

Exact Numeric Data Types

The exact numeric data types are determinate in value, meaning they do not fluctuate and represent integer or fixed-point data precisely. Below is a list of exact numeric data types and their use cases:

  • INT: An integer data type used to store whole numbers that do not require deci>
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big data, binary strings, character strings, data types, Database, date and time, DECIMAL, exact numerics, FLOAT, integer, NUMERIC, performance, SQL Server, storage, Unicode

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