Appendix D. T-SQL Datatypes
As explained in Lesson 1, “Understanding SQL,” datatypes are basically rules that define what data may be stored in a column and how that data is actually stored.
Datatypes are used for several reasons:
• Datatypes enable you to restrict the type of data that can be stored in a column. For example, a numeric datatype column only accepts numeric values.
• Datatypes allow for more efficient storage, internally. Numbers and date/time values can be stored in a more condensed format than text strings.
• Datatypes allow for alternate sorting orders. If everything is treated as strings, 1 comes before 10, which comes before 2. (Strings are sorted in dictionary sequence, one character at a time starting from ...
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