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Numeric and Date-time data types in SQL Server

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MS SQL Server supports a wide range of data types. There are a few more important data types that are included in the article. In this article, we will cover numeric SQL server data types and different date-time data types. Let’s discuss one by one.

  1. bit :
    A bit is the smallest unit of a computer system. A bit can be either 0 or 1. The bit datatype can take NULL values as well.

    Syntax –

    column_name bit; 

    A bit can take up to 8 bytes of storage while 2 bits can take up to 16 bits and the cycle continues.

  2. int :
    A data type that can store integer values(positive and negative). The storage size is up to 8 bytes(-2⁶³ to 2⁶³-1). It is sub-categorized into tinyint, int, smallint, bigint. They can be used according to the number of bytes that can be stored.

    • (i). bigint –
      A numeric integer datatype that has the maximum storage of 8 bytes.(-2⁶³ to 2⁶³-1). It can store positive and negative values as well. It can be used for storing huge numbers.



      Syntax –

      column_name bigint; 
    • (ii). int –
      A numeric integer datatype having a storage size of 4 bytes.

      Syntax –

      column_name int; 
    • (iii). smallint –
      A numeric integer type that stores 2 bytes of data.

      Syntax –

      column_name smallint; 
    • (iv). tinyint –
      A numeric datatype that stores 1 byte.

      Syntax –

      column_name tinyint; 

      For example, a student roll number in a class table can be assigned as follows.

      rollnumber int;  

      SQL server Numeric Data Types Table :

      Numeric Data Type Integer size (In Bytes)
      bit  Value(0, 1 or NULL)
      tinyint
      smallint
      int
      bigint
      decimal(p,s) 5 to 17 
      numeric(p,s) 5 to 17 
      smallmoney
      money
      float(n) 4 or 8 
      real
  3. decimal :
    A data type that can store decimal values. This datatype can be used for storing percentage values.

    Syntax –

    column_name decimal(precision, scale) 

    For example,

    percentage(4,3)  

    Precision is a term used for describing the number of digits to be stored from left to right while the scale is a term used for storing the number of digits after the decimal point.

    Take the instance of e-commerce where the product delivery date and time are to be stored in the database. For such cases, there are few data types supported by MS SQL SERVER:

  4. date :
    It stores the date in the format of yyyy-mm-dd.

    Syntax –

    date 
  5. time :
    It stores the time based on 24 hours clock.

    Syntax –

    time 
  6. datetime2 :
    It stores the date and time as well in the format of yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm: ss.

    Syntax –

    datetime2 

    There are data types that can store money, unique identifiers, XML data, and much more. However, in the future versions of SQL Server, some data types will be removed for some reason. Make sure to use the data types that are available in the SQL Server. Different types of date-time data types table in the SQL server as follows:

    Data type Size (In Bytes)
    datetime
    datetime2 6 to 8 
    smalldatetime
    date
    time 3 to 5
    datetimeoffset 8 to 10 
    timestamp Unique no.

Last Updated : 15 Sep, 2020
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