Why use sql variant

MaxLength Maximum data type length, in bytes. Related Articles. Row sizes exceeding bytes in Sql Handling error converting data type varchar to numeric in SQL Server. SQL Server differences of char, nchar, varchar and nvarchar data types. Always use the right case for data type names in SQL Server. Popular Articles. Rolling up multiple rows into a single row and column for SQL Server data. How to tell what SQL Server versions you are running.

This predictability makes writing queries and applications against those columns easier. It's difficult enough dealing with NULL values, so adding confusion with handling data conversions is an invitation to introduce bugs. The official documentation for this data type - available from Microsoft Docs - tells us that:.

Another aspect of this data type is that it is not fully supported by ODBC, so depending on the driver you use to connect to the database the underlying column will be returned in binary. Let's look at a simple example using three "base" types to see what the storage engine is doing. The following information is combined from these results for clarity. Readers familiar with hexadecimal values will recognize the hex equivalent of the three different values in the above table:. We can immediately see prefixes: 0xEF08C and 0xAF08C for the string values which look similar, and 0x for the integer value.

What gives? This decimal value is converted to hex, and represents the first byte in the prefix. Starting with the integer, Martin Smith did a lot of the heavy lifting for us already in a StackOverflow answer from seven years ago:. This isn't an academic website for college kids. They need real world help. Show 5 more comments. Jeff Moden Jeff Moden 2, 1 1 gold badge 23 23 silver badges 19 19 bronze badges.

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