Hi Jeff,

I tried some test INSERTs this morning, on a table with 20 SQL_VARIANT columns and 17 correctly-typed columns, and didn't get any warnings about column size. I'm in the...

I agree with you Jeff....I just don't see another way of achieving what I need to do. At least not without putting a 3GL business logic layer on top of...

Hi Lynn and Jeff,

Thanks for your valuable input, I evaluated each concern and concluded the benefits outweigh the costs:

1) Indexing a sql_variant - per BOL:

sql_variant columns can be used...

OK, I'm going to try the following: create every extended field as a sql_variant, so I can then assign a zero-length string to any column. Not great for space (16...

Hi Jeff,

Yes, I'd considered something similar to your suggestion - it works perfectly for char data, unfortunately being a pricing engine, most of the fields are numeric. One idea was...

Thanks for all the replies folks. I'll explain what I'm trying to do - I know it's an unusual request, but there's a good reason for it.

I'm writing a pricing...