Rowversion/timestamp in SSMS 2018 version

Question

I need to create a column with rowversion as column name and the datatype is either rowversion or timestamp. I am getting an error saying that 'cannot find the datatype 'timestamp' and 'cannot find the datatype rowversion'. I am copying a table from external database. So it will be good for me to keep the column name as rowversion itself. Help me here to create a column in the table.
This is the syntax I have used.

alter table table_name
add rv rowversion

alter table table_name
add rv timestamp

Answer 1

I have one doubt though. I am trying to do this in Azure Synapse. Is that the problem?

Yes. Azure Synapse supports most T-SQL types but there are a few exceptions. Below is an excerpt from the Query Language documentation that explains why the rowversion (a.k.a. timestamp) is not recognized (added emphasis in bold):

all Transact-SQL types except cursor, hierarchyid, ntext, text, and image, rowversion, Spatial Types, sql_variant, and xml

You can use timestamp as a column name but with an alternate data type (e.g. binary(8)). The implication is data loaded as part of an ETL process will need to be converted for ingestion and. of course, the value will not automatically change with row updates like rowversion type values do in SQL Server.

Answer 2

timestamp is deprecated and should not be used. It is an alias for rowversion.

The syntax looks valid at this point.

   ALTER TABLE TestTable  
   ADD rv rowversion;  

Answer 3

@Maneesha John I tried SSMS 18.12.1 with SQL Server 2019 and works for me

Regards
Geetha