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.

IndividualIdFirstNameLastNameUserName


 

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

bigintnumericbitsmallintdecimalsmallmoneyinttinyintmoney

Approximate Numerics

floatreal

Date and Time

datedatetimeoffsetdatetime2smalldatetimedatetimetime

Character Strings

charvarchartext

Unicode Character Strings

ncharnvarcharntext

Binary

binaryvarbinaryimage

Other Data Types

cursortimestamphierarchyiduniqueidentifiersql_variantxmltableSpatial 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.