SQL Server 2008 New Data Types

 

SQL Server 2008 New Data Types:

Date and Time: 

     Four new date and time data types have been added, making working with time much easier than it ever has in the past. They include: DATE, TIME, DATETIME2, and DATETIMEOFFSET.

Spatial: 

     Two new spatial data types have been added--GEOMETRY and GEOGRAPHY--which you can use to natively store and manipulate location-based information, such as Global Positioning System (GPS) data.

HIERARCHYID: 

   The HIERARCHYID data type is used to enable database applications to model hierarchical tree structures, such as the organization chart of a business.

FILESTREAM: 

    FILESTREAM is not a data type as such, but is a variation of the VARBINARY(MAX) data type that allows unstructured data to be stored in the file system instead of inside the SQL Server database. Because this option requires a lot of involvement from both the DBA administration and development side, I will spend more time on this topic than the rest.

Date and Time

In SQL Server 2005 and earlier, SQL Server only offered two date and time data types: DATETIME and SMALLDATETIME. While they were useful in many cases, they had a lot of limitations, including:

     Both the date value and the time value are part of both of these data types, and you can’t choose to store one or the other. This often causes a lot of wasted storage (because you store data you don’t need or want); adds unwanted complexity to many queries because the data types often had to be converted to a different form to be useful; and often reduces performance because WHERE clauses with these data and time data types often had to include functions to convert them to a more useful form, preventing these queries from using indexes.

  They are not time-zone aware, which often requires extra coding for time-aware applications.

     Precision is only .333 seconds, which is often not granular enough for some applications.

  

    The range of supported dates is not adequate for some applications, and the range does not match the range of .NET CLR DATETIME data type, which requires additional conversion code.

To overcome these problems, SQL Server 2008 introduces four new date and time data types, which include:

 DATE: 

   As you can imagine, the DATE data type only stores a date in the format of YYYY-MM-DD. It has a range of 0001-01-01 through 9999-12-32, which should be adequate for most business and scientific applications. The accuracy is 1 day, and it only takes 3 bytes to store the date. 

TIME:

    TIME is stored in the format: hh:mm:ss.nnnnnnn, with a range of 00:00:00.0000000 through 23:59:59:9999999 and is accurate to 100 nanoseconds. Storage depends on the precision and scale selected, and runs from 3 to 5 bytes.

DATETIME2:  

    DATETIME2 is very similar to the older DATETIME data type, but has a greater range and precision. The format is YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss:nnnnnnnm with a range of 0001-01-01 00:00:00.0000000 through 9999-12-31 23:59:59.9999999, and an accuracy of 100 nanoseconds. Storage depends on the precision and scale selected, and runs from 6 to 8 bytes.

DATETIMEOFFSET: 

    DATETIMEOFFSET is similar to DATETIME2, but includes additional information to track the time zone. The format is YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss[.nnnnnnn] [+|-]hh:mm with a range of 0001-01-01 00:00:00.0000000 through 0001-01-01 00:00:00.0000000 through 9999-12-31 23:59:59.9999999 (in UTC), and an accuracy of 100 nanoseconds. Storage depends on the precision and scale selected, and runs from 8 to 10 bytes.

Spatial

While spatial data has been stored in many SQL Server databases for many years (using conventional data types) SQL Server 2008 includes the introduction of two specific spatial data types which can make it easier for developers to integrate spatial data in their SQL Server-based applications. In addition, by storing spatial data in relational tables, it becomes much easier to combine spatial data with other kinds of business data. For example, by combining spatial data (such as longitude and latitude) with the physical address of a business, applications can be created to map business locations on a map.

They include:

 GEOMETRY: 

    The GEOMETRY data type is used to store planar (flat-earth) data. It is generally used to store XY coordinates that represent points, lines, and polygons in a two-dimensional space. For example storing XY coordinates in the GEOMETRY data type can be used to map the exterior of a building.

  GEOGRAPHY: 

     The GEOGRAPHY data type is used to store ellipsoidal (round-earth) data. It is used to store latitude and longitude coordinates that represent points, lines, and polygons on the earth’s surface. For example, GPS data that represents the lay of the land is one example of data that can be stored in the GEOGRAPHY data type.

  

  Another feature of spatial data types is that they support special spatial indexes. Unlike conventional indexes, spatial indexes consist of a grid-based hierarchy in which each level of the index subdivides the grid sector that is defined in the level above. But like conventional indexes, the SQL Server query optimizer can use spatial indexes to speed up the performance of queries that return spatial data.

HIERARCHYID

While hierarchical tree structures are commonly used in many applications, SQL Server has not made it easy to represent and store them in relational tables. In SQL Server 2008, the HIERARCHYID data type has been added to help resolve this problem. It is designed to store values that represent the position of nodes of a hierarchal tree structure.

For example, the HIERARCHYID data type makes it easier to express these types of relationships without requiring multiple parent/child tables and complex joins.

•   Organizational structures
•   A set of tasks that make up a larger projects (like a GANTT chart)
•   File systems (folders and their sub-folders)
•   A classification of language terms
•   A bill of materials to assemble or build a product
•   A graphical representation of links between web pages

Unlike standard data types, the HIERARCHYID data type is a CLR user-defined type, and it exposes many methods that allow you to manipulate the date stored within it.

For example, there are methods to get the current hierarchy level, get the previous level, get the next level, and many more. In fact, the HIERARCHYID data type is only used to store hierarchical data; it does not automatically represent a hierarchical structure. It is the responsibility of the application to create and assign HIERARCHYID values in a way that represents the desired relationship. 

FILESTREAM

SQL Server is great for storing relational data in a highly structured format, but it has never been particularly good at storing unstructured data, such as videos, graphic files, Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and so on. In the past, when developers wanted to use SQL Server to manage such unstructured data, developers essentially had two choices. They could store unstructured data in VARBINARY(MAX) columns inside the database; or they could store the data outside of the database as part of the file system, and include pointers inside a column that pointed to the file’s location. This allowed an application that needed access to the file to find it by looking up the file’s location from inside a SQL Server table.

FILESTREAM storage offers these additional benefits:

   Transact-SQL can be used to SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE FILESTREAM data.

     By default, FILESTREAM data is backed up and restored as part of the database file. If you want, there is an option available so you can backup a database without the FILESTREAM data.

  The size of the stored data is only limited by the available space of the file system. Standard VARBINARY(MAX) data is limited to 2 GB.

As you might expect, using FILESTREAM storage is not right for every situation, for example, it is best used under the following conditions:

•   When the BLOB file sizes average 1MB or higher.
•   When fast read access is important to your application.
•   When applications are being built that use a middle layer for application logic.
•   When encryption is not required, as it is not supported for FILESTREAM data.