sq20

You create a table using the CREATE TABLE command.

SQL syntax

CREATE TABLE table_name
(column_name_1 datatype,
column_name_2 datatype,
...
);

Example

CREATE TABLE Individual
(IndividualId int,
FirstName Varchar(255),
LastName Varchar(255),
UserName Char(10)
);

Result

This results in an empty table. You can now use an INSERT statement to add data to the table.

IndividualId	FirstName	LastName	UserName

Data Types

You'll notice we explicitly stated the data type in our CREATE TABLE statement. This is because, when you create a column, you need to tell the database what type of data it can hold.

The exact data types and how they are expressed differs with each database system and vendor, but you'll find that generally, there will be support for fixed length strings (eg, char), variable length strings (eg varchar), date/time values (eg, datetime), numbers and integers (eg, bigint, int, smallint, tinyint, numeric).

The following base data types are available in SQL Server.

Exact Numerics

bigint	numeric
bit	smallint
decimal	smallmoney
int	tinyint
money

Approximate Numerics

float

real

Date and Time

date	datetimeoffset
datetime2	smalldatetime
datetime	time

Character Strings

char	varchar
text

Unicode Character Strings

nchar	nvarchar
ntext

Binary

binary	varbinary
image

Other Data Types

cursor	timestamp
hierarchyid	uniqueidentifier
sql_variant	xml
table	Spatial Types

You may need to consult your database system's documentation if you're unsure of which data type to use or how it is expressed in that system.

Next, we learn how to create an index for our table with the CREATE INDEX command.