11 out of 16 rated this helpful - Rate this topic

Data Types (Windows Azure SQL Database)

Microsoft Windows Azure SQL Database provides support for many of SQL Server's system data types. This topic describes the supported and unsupported system data types.

The following table lists the data type categories and also describes the support for system data types:

Data Type Category	SQL Database Support
Exact numerics	Supported: bigint, bit, decimal, int, money, numeric, smallint, smallmoney, tinyint.
Approximate numerics	Supported: float, real.
Date and time	Supported: date, datetime2, datetime, datetimeoffset, smalldatetime, time.
Character strings	Supported: char, varchar, text.
Unicode character strings	Supported: nchar, nvarchar, ntext.
Binary strings	Supported: binary, varbinary, image.
Spatial data types	Supported: geography, geometry.
Other data types	Supported: cursor, hierarchyid, sql_variant, table, timestamp, uniqueidentifier, xml.

Important
Windows Azure SQL Database does not support user-defined common language runtime (CLR) data types. For more information about the data types specified in this topic, see Data Types (Transact-SQL) in SQL Server Books Online.

Support for geography Data Type Methods

Windows Azure SQL Database supports the following OGC methods on the geography data type:

STArea	STEndPoint	STNumPoints
STAsBinary	STEquals	STOverlaps
STAsText	STGeometryN	STPointN
STBuffer	STGeometryType	STSrid
STContains	STIntersection	STStartPoint
STConvexHull	STIntersects	STSymDifference
STDifference	STIsClosed	STUnion
STDimension	STIsEmpty	STWithin
STDisjoint	STLength
STDistance	STNumGeometries

Windows Azure SQL Database supports the following OGC static methods on the geography data type:

STGeomFromText	STMPolyFromText	STPolyFromWKB
STPointFromText	STGeomCollFromText	STMPointFromWKB
STLineFromText	STGeomCollFromWKB	STMLineFromWKB
STPolyFromText	STGeomFromWKB	STMPolyFromWKB
STMPointFromText	STPointFromWKB
STMLineFromText	STLineFromWKB

Windows Azure SQL Database supports the following extended methods on the geography data type:

AsGml	IsNull	ReorientObject
AsTextZM	M	ShortestLineTo
BufferWithTolerance	MakeValid	ToString
Filter	MinDbCompatibilityLevel	Z
InstanceOf	Reduce

Windows Azure SQL Database supports the following extended static methods on the geography data type:

GeomFromGml	Parse	Point
Null

Support for geometry Data Type Methods

Windows Azure SQL Database supports the following OGC methods on the geometry data type:

STArea	STEquals	STNumPoints
STAsBinary	STExteriorRing	STOverlaps
STAsText	STGeometryN	STPointN
STBoundary	STGeometryType	STPointOnSurface
STBuffer	STInteriorRingN	STRelate
STCentroid	STIntersection	STSrid
STContains	STIntersects	STStartPoint
STConvexHull	STIsClosed	STSymDifference
STCrosses	STIsEmpty	STTouches
STDifference	STIsRing	STUnion
STDimension	STIsSimple	STWithin
STDisjoint	STIsValid	STX
STDistance	STLength	STY
STEndPoint	STNumGeometries
STEnvelope	STNumInteriorRing

Windows Azure SQL Database supports the following OGC static methods on the geometry data type:

STSGeomFromText	STMPolyFromText	STPolyFromWKB
STPointFromText	STGeomCollFromText	STMPointFromWKB
STLineFromText	STGeomCollFromWKB	STMLineFromWKB
STPolyFromText	STGeomFromWKB	STPolyFromWKB
STMPointFromText	STPointFromWKB
STMLineFromText	STLineFromWKB

Windows Azure SQL Database supports the following extended methods on the geometry data type:

AsGml	IsNull	ShortestLineTo
AsTextZM	M	ToString
BufferWithTolerance	MakeValid	Z
Filter	MinDbCompatibilitylevel
InstanceOf	Reduce

Windows Azure SQL Database supports the following extended static methods on the geometry data type:

GeomFromGml	Parse	Point
Null

Support for hierarchyid Data Type Methods

Windows Azure SQL Database supports the following methods on the hierarchyid data type:

GetAncestor	IsDescendantOf	ToString
GetDescendant	Parse	Write
GetLevel	Read
GetRoot	GetReparentedValue

The xml Data Type

Windows Azure SQL Database supports xml data type that stores XML data. You can store xml instances in a column or in a variable of the xml type.

Support for XML Data Modification Language

The XML data modification language (XML DML) is an extension of the XQuery language. The XML DML adds the following case-sensitive keywords to XQuery and they are supported in Windows Azure SQL Database:

insert (XML DML)
delete (XML DML)
replace value of (XML DML)

Support for xml Data Type Methods

You can use the xml data type methods to query an XML instance stored in a variable or column of the xml type. Windows Azure SQL Database supports the following xml data type methods:

query() Method (xml data type)
value() Method (xml data type)
exist() Method (xml data type)
modify() Method (xml data type)
nodes() Method (xml data type)

Community Additions

ADD