Data Type Tips The reserved words smallint are a few names,
taken from only two programming languages, that indicate a two-
byte signed integer. The names and storage mechanisms for
various kinds of data have become as varied as the colors of
leaves in New England in the fall. This really isn't so bad if
you spend all your time programming in just one language.
However, if you're like most developers, you are probably using
a number of languages and technologies, which requires you to
write code to convert data from one data type to another
frequently. Many developers for one reason or another resort to
using variant data types, which can further complicate matters,
require more CPU processing, and are usually abused. Variant
data types definitely have their place but they are often
abused. The fact is that a programmer should understand the
strengths, weaknesses and implications of using any data type.
One good example of where variants might be employed are
functions specifically designed to accept and handl