Does Microsoft SQL Server support unsigned integer data types?
I am trying to learn a bit more about the data type choices and helping a friend in his database project, I know that MySQL does.
asked Mar 18, 2016 at 22:47
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2 Answers
No. The numeric data types are all signed.
For example an int is from approx. -2^31 to +2^31.
If you have a value just shy of 2^32 you will have to use a larger data type such as bigint. There are finer points here, but out of scope of this discussion.
Related Q & A:
Why aren't unsigned integer types available in the top database platforms?
Documentation:
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You can easily emulate unsigned 32-bit int with your regular, signed bigint. Do whatever arithmetics needs to be done, AND with 0xFFFFFFFF for every operation that may potentially overflow the lower 32 bits.
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Doing
AND 0xFFFFFFFFwould just sweep-under-the-rug any overflow issues - I feel aCHECK CONSTRAINTto set a bounds on the range would be better as that would throw an error on overflow rather than hiding it. Another problem with using a wider type (e.g.bigintinstead of a hypotheticalutin32) is that you end-up wasting 4 bytes per column per record, which could add-up. In a recent application I built I ended-up storinguint64values as signedbigintvalues and transforming values (and query parameters) at the last minute - which added more complexity.– DaiCommented Feb 19, 2021 at 23:18 -
1It's up to the OP how to handle that. Some algorithms depend on silent overflow. Commented Feb 19, 2021 at 23:21