These are my recommended defaults for this course because of their compatibility with Microsoft Access, VBA, and Classic ASP. They're not necessarily the best choices for every SQL Server application.

If you're doing complex financial calculations directly in SQL Server, DECIMAL may be a better choice because it gives you more control over precision and rounding.

Also, if you're converting existing tables, remember that DATETIME supports dates starting in 1753 and has less fractional-second precision than DATETIME2. MONEY also has a smaller numeric range than DECIMAL(19,4).

For our everyday Access business applications, these limitations generally aren't an issue. We'll explore the differences in more detail in Beginner Level 2.