The following table lists ANSI SQL data types, their equivalent Microsoft Access database engine SQL data types, and their valid synonyms. It also lists the equivalent Microsoft® SQL Server™ data types.
ANSI SQL data type
Microsoft Access SQL data type
Synonym
Microsoft SQL Server data type
BIT, BIT VARYING
BINARY (See Notes)
VARBINARY, BINARY VARYING BIT VARYING
BINARY, VARBINARY
Not supported
BIT (See Notes)
BOOLEAN, LOGICAL, LOGICAL1, YESNO
BIT
Not supported
TINYINT
INTEGER1, BYTE
TINYINT
Not supported
COUNTER (See Notes)
AUTOINCREMENT
(See Notes)
Not supported
MONEY
CURRENCY
MONEY
DATE, TIME, TIMESTAMP
DATETIME
DATE, TIME (See Notes)
DATETIME
Not supported
UNIQUEIDENTIFIER
GUID
UNIQUEIDENTIFIER
DECIMAL
DECIMAL
NUMERIC, DEC
DECIMAL
REAL
REAL
SINGLE, FLOAT4, IEEESINGLE
REAL
DOUBLE PRECISION, FLOAT
FLOAT
DOUBLE, FLOAT8, IEEEDOUBLE, NUMBER (See Notes)
FLOAT
SMALLINT
SMALLINT
SHORT, INTEGER2
SMALLINT
INTEGER
INTEGER
LONG, INT, INTEGER4
INTEGER
INTERVAL
Not supported
Not supported
Not supported
IMAGE
LONGBINARY, GENERAL, OLEOBJECT
IMAGE
Not supported
TEXT (See Notes)
LONGTEXT, LONGCHAR, MEMO, NOTE, NTEXT (See Notes)
TEXT
CHARACTER, CHARACTER VARYING, NATIONAL CHARACTER, NATIONAL CHARACTER VARYING
CHAR (See Notes)
TEXT(n), ALPHANUMERIC, CHARACTER, STRING, VARCHAR, CHARACTER VARYING, NCHAR, NATIONAL CHARACTER, NATIONAL CHAR, NATIONAL CHARACTER VARYING, NATIONAL CHAR VARYING (See Notes)
CHAR, VARCHAR, NCHAR, NVARCHAR
Notes
The ANSI SQL BIT data type does not correspond to the Microsoft Access SQL BIT data type. It corresponds to the BINARY data type instead. There is no ANSI SQL equivalent for the Microsoft Access SQL BIT data type.
TIMESTAMP is no longer supported as a synonym for DATETIME.
NUMERIC is no longer supported as a synonym for FLOAT or DOUBLE. NUMERIC is now used as a synonym for DECIMAL.
A LONGTEXT field is always stored in the Unicode representation format.
If the data type name TEXT is used without specifying the optional length, for example TEXT(25), a LONGTEXT field is created. This enables CREATE TABLE statements to be written that will yield data types consistent with Microsoft SQL Server.
A CHAR field is always stored in the Unicode representation format, which is the equivalent of the ANSI SQL NATIONAL CHAR data type.
If the data type name TEXT is used and the optional length is specified, for example TEXT(25), the data type of the field is equivalent to the CHAR data type. This preserves backwards compatibility for most Microsoft Jet applications, while enabling the TEXT data type (without a length specification) to be aligned with Microsoft SQL Server.