variable-width equivalents to fixed-width data types in SQL Server

Question

I've read that in SQL Server, fixed-width data types always occupy space whether a column value is NULL or not whereas variable-width data types do not if the column value is NULL. Is there a variable-width equivalent to int, float, datetime, etc.?

There was a `vardecimal` in SQL Server 2008 - but that's been deprecated again in favour of row/page compression — marc_s, Oct 17 '12 at 04:54

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 16 '12 at 23:09

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Q: Are there variable types that don't consume a fixed amount of space?

A: Sure. nvarchar, ntext, image and Document XML come immediately to mind.

Q: Is there anything besides fixed width for types like int, number or datetime?

A: Nope :)

answered Oct 16 '12 at 23:09

paulsm4

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score 1 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:44

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You are correct that the datatypes that start with "VAR" do not take up space on the data page when they are valued NULL. The datatypes for which a VAR version is available are only the character and binary datatypes. All the other ones like INT and DATETIME always take a fixed amount of space independent of their value. See Space used by nulls in database

edited May 23 '17 at 11:44

Community

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answered Oct 16 '12 at 23:32

Sebastian Meine

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There are some exception, e.g. compression, sparse columns and consecutive bit columns. – Aaron Bertrand Oct 17 '12 at 00:41

variable-width equivalents to fixed-width data types in SQL Server

2 Answers2