Breaking Type Barriers with UDTs in SQL Server 2005
Using SQL Server 2005 and the .NET 2.0 framework you can go beyond the standard data types recognized by SQL Server and create your own User Defined Types (UDTs) using any .NET Language—and then use them exactly the same way you use the built-in types.
by Thiru Thangarathinam
December 3, 2004
he integration of the common language runtime (CLR) into Microsoft SQL Server2005 gives developers much more flexibility than ever before. This new feature lets you author stored procedures, triggers, and user defined functions and types using managed languages such as VB.NET or C#. The managed-code approach provides a number of benefits such as increased productivity, significant performance gains, and the ability to leverage the features of .NET Code Access Security to prevent assembles from performing certain operations. This article shows how to use the new CLR integration feature to create user defined types (UDTs) in SQL Server using a managed language and use them from ADO.NET.
UDTs and the .NET CLR
A user-defined type is a custom collection of data values and methods. By default, SQL Server recognizes a large number of individual data types, but it's often useful to group these into a custom type with specific capabilities. Like other type structures in .NET, your SQL Server UDTs can have methods that you can call directly on the database server or on the client. User-defined data types are by far the most complex of all the database object types you can implement with the CLR. UDTs are not simple methods or types that have only predefined methods and attributes, but rather a very flexible way of extending the type system in SQL Server 2005.
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he integration of the common language runtime (CLR) into Microsoft SQL Server2005 gives developers much more flexibility than ever before. This new feature lets you author stored procedures, triggers, and user defined functions and types using managed languages such as VB.NET or C#. The managed-code approach provides a number of benefits such as increased productivity, significant performance gains, and the ability to leverage the features of .NET Code Access Security to prevent assembles from performing certain operations. This article shows how to use the new CLR integration feature to create user defined types (UDTs) in SQL Server using a managed language and use them from ADO.NET.
