What datatype should be used for storing phone numbers in SQL Server 2005?

Question

I need to store phone numbers in a table. Please suggest which datatype should I use? Wait. Please read on before you hit reply..

This field needs

Answer 1

SQL Server 2005 is pretty well optimized for substring queries for text in indexed varchar fields. For 2005 they introduced new statistics to the string summary for index fields. This helps significantly with full text searching.