Each column, local variable, parameter, and expression has a data type. The data type specifies the kind of data that the column, variable, parameter, or expression can contain. The data type informs the system how to interpret bit patterns.
SQL Data Sync supports a subset of Windows Azure SQL Database data types. The first table below lists SQL Database data types supported by SQL Data Sync. The second table lists the SQL Database data types currently not supported by SQL Data Sync.
Supported Data Types
Data Type Category
Supported SQL Database Data Type
Exact Numbers
Supported: bigint, bit, decimal, int, money, numeric, smallint, smallmoney, tinyint.
Approximate Numbers
Supported: float, real.
Date and Time
Supported: date, datetime2, datetime, datetimeoffset, smalldatetime, time.
Character Strings
Supported: char, varchar, text.
Unicode Character Strings
Supported: nchar, nvarchar, ntext.
Binary Strings
Supported: binary, varbinary, image.
Spatial
Supported: no supported spatial data types
Other Data Types
Supported: sql_variant, table, uniqueidentifier, xml.
Unsupported Data Type
Spatial Data Types
Not supported: geography, geometry.
FileStream
Not supported
CLR UDT
SQL UDT
XML Data Types
Not supported: XmlSchemaCollection
Not supported: cursor, timestamp, hierarchyid
For More Information
Liam Cavanagh - MSFT edited Revision 7. Comment: Formatting of table led people to miss the timestamp and hierarchy id data types as unsupported