Is there a way to bind a variable type to column data type?

Question

In Oracle PL/SQL, you can always bind your code variables' type to a specific table.column type like this:

myVar TABLE.COLUMN%TYPE

So, if you change the column's type, you don't have to go over your code to re-define related var types (of course you'd still need to check you are properly using the variable).

Is there a similar way to define this in SQL Server 2005?

Answer 1

If there is one, I'd like to know but in my experience so far:

• %TYPE
• %ROWTYPE

...are not supported and do not have alternatives in TSQL.

Answer 2

No, you can't do that in SQL Server.

Closest I can think of is to use a user-defined type to "mask" the underlying type. But IMHO that's not ideal for what you want. Or there's sql_variant which is:

A data type that stores values of various SQL Server-supported data types.

But, again this would really be a cludge (with limitations).

Answer 3

If you are desparate, you could use the "sql_variant" data type. However, it can be awkward to use, and has always seemed to be a kludge to me.