Should I use SQL_Variant data type?

Question

using SQL Server 2005 with SP4 and I am designing a database table.

Here is the table DDL

CREATE TABLE CPSync4D.ProjectProfilerOption
(
    ProjectP         


        

Answer 1

I know my answer is a bit late but the table being made here looks a bit like an application configuration table. As an alternative to the suggestions given, let's think about not limiting ourselves to 30 or even 8000 characters. Let's also make it a bit more self contained and user definable.

With those thoughts in mind, why not save the "profile" information as an XML data type which would even allow multiple levels of settings? You probably wouldn't need such columns as ProfilerOptionID anymore and might be able to get this down to one simple control table.