Data type synonyms are included in SQL Server for ISO compatibility. The following table lists the synonyms and the SQL Server system data types that they map to.

To this effect, they have introduced the HierarchId data type in SQL Server 2008. In traditional hierarchies, a row merely stores a reference to its parent node.

This post is authored by Amit Banerjee, Principal PM Manager, SQL Server and Bob Ward, Principal Architect, Microsoft SQL Server Data Services. SQL Server has provided enterprises the capability to ...

Update 8/30: the SQL Server 2019 RC 1.1 refresh now "includes bits for Big Data Clusters," according to Microsoft's August 29 post.

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A new SQL Server 2025 feature lets organizations run vector-based semantic searches on their own data, connecting to local or cloud-hosted AI models without relying on massive general-purpose LLMs.