Tuning the Schema - Professional SQL Server 2005 Performance Tuning - page 201

Table 8-2: Data Types (continued)

Group Type name Range Storage Comments

Binary Strings Binary( n ) String of bits n bytes. Fixed length. Always

occupies n bytes, even if
some bytes are unused.
Valid values for n range
from 1-8000.

Varbinary( n ) String of bits 1 byte for each

stored
character.

Variable length. Valid
values for n range from 1 -
8000. If n is omitted the
default is 1. Unused bytes
do not occupy storage
space. However, 2
additional bytes are
added. These are used as
an offset indicating the
location of the binary
string's end. See ''Row
Overflow Considerations.''

Up to 2 31 -1
bytes

Varbinary(max) String of bits. See ''Large Value Data

Types.''

image String of bits. 16-byte

pointer is
stored in the
row. Up to
2 31

See ''Large Value Data
Types.''

− 1bytes

Misc. types Xml This allows

storage of
complete or
partial XML
documents

Up to 2 GB. These documents can be

either typed or untyped.
See BOL for details about
creating a typed column.
See ''Large Value Data
Types.''

Sql_variant See entries for

base datatypes.

??? This allows storing values

of various data types,
except text, ntext, image,
timestamp, and
sql_variant. See ''Row
Overflow Considerations.''

Sysname Unicode

characters

2bytesfor
each stored
character.

Equivalent to
nvarchar(128)

Continued