SQL Server Storage sql_variant USE tempdb ;
GO

DROP TABLE tbl ;
GO

CREATE TABLE tbl
(
    i SQL_VARIANT NOT NULL
) ;
GO

INSERT INTO tbl (i)
    VALUES (1) ;
GO

SELECT i FROM tbl ; 
GO

DBCC IND ('tempdb','tbl',-1) ;
GO

DBCC TRACEON (3604) ; -- Page dump will go the console
GO

DBCC PAGE ('tempdb',1,157,3) ;
GO



Record Size = 17B
30000400 01000001 00110038 01010000 00
TagA = 0x30       = 1B
TagB = 0x00       = 1B
Null Bitmap Offset    = 0x0004    = 2B
Column Count      = 0x0001    = 2B
Null Bitmap       = 0x00      = 1B 
Variable-Length Columns Count = 0x0001    = 2B
Variable-Length Column Offset Array  = 0x0011     = 2B
This is the sql_variant encoding for integers...I guess = 0x0138 = 2B 
Our integer column    = 0x00000001 = 4B



    SELECT
      SQL_VARIANT_PROPERTY(i , 'BaseType') AS BaseType      -- SYSNAME NVARCHAR(128)
    , SQL_VARIANT_PROPERTY(i , 'Precision') AS [Precision]  -- INT
    , SQL_VARIANT_PROPERTY(i , 'Scale') AS Scale            -- INT
    , SQL_VARIANT_PROPERTY(i , 'TotalBytes') AS TotalBytes  -- INT
    , SQL_VARIANT_PROPERTY(i , 'Collation') AS [Collation]  -- SYSNAME NVARCHAR(128)
    , SQL_VARIANT_PROPERTY(i , 'MaxLength') AS MaxLength    -- INT
FROM
      tbl ;
GO


My questions:


0x3801...what is that
i = 328792402 Huh?  Where did this come from?
SQL_VARIANT_PROPERTY() says I have an integer. Why does it not choose tinyint?
Does anyone know where SQL_VARIANT_PROPERTY() can be found. Must I use the DAC to get at it?
The first 2 answers are from the SQL Server Internals Book p.278


0x38 is 56 in decimal. This indicates int in sys.types (system_type_id column)
0x01 is the version number of the sql_variant format (always 1 in SQL Server 2008)
This is the way the literal 1 is always interpreted in SQL Server. e.g. SELECT 1 AS foo INTO NewTable will create a new column of integer datatype. Use an explicit cast if you want it to be treated as a different datatype.
This is part of the product source code. You cannot view the definition.


BTW: If you are looking at other datatypes as well you may encounter some additional bytes between the version number and the column value as follows.


numeric/decimal have 1 byte each for precision and scale.
[n][var]char have 2 bytes for max length and 4 bytes for collation id.
[var]binary have 2 bytes for max length.