Share via

  • Article

Data Type Precedence (Transact-SQL)

When an operator combines two expressions of different data types, the rules for data type precedence specify that the data type with the lower precedence is converted to the data type with the higher precedence. If the conversion is not a supported implicit conversion, an error is returned. When both operand expressions have the same data type, the result of the operation has that data type.

SQL Server uses the following precedence order for data types:

  1. user-defined data types (highest)

  2. sql_variant

  3. xml

  4. datetimeoffset

  5. datetime2

  6. datetime

  7. smalldatetime

  8. date

  9. time

  10. float

  11. real

  12. decimal

  13. money

  14. smallmoney

  15. bigint

  16. int

  17. smallint

  18. tinyint

  19. bit

  20. ntext

  21. text

  22. image

  23. timestamp

  24. uniqueidentifier

  25. nvarchar (including nvarchar(max) )

  26. nchar

  27. varchar (including varchar(max) )

  28. char

  29. varbinary (including varbinary(max) )

  30. binary (lowest)