Simulate enums in TSQL?

You could take a look at the answer to this question. As far as I know, enum types are not part of SQL Server.

Anyhow, it's better to use an integral (INT, TINYINT, ...) type for your enums than a string type. Usually the enum types in your programming language of choice correspond better to integers than to strings.

In C#, by default every enum value corresponds to an integer, starting from 0. You can even cast between them, so this is valid code:

public enum MyEnum
{
    FirstEnumValue = 0,
    SecondEnumValue = 1
}

...

// Assuming you have opened a SqlDataReader.
MyEnum enumValue = (MyEnum) reader["account_category"];

And LINQtoSQL also supports this. If you have an enum-typed property and your database column is an integer type, conversion is automatic.

You could use a CASE statement.

To create an enum-esque example from a resultset, you could do something like this:

SELECT
    FirstName,
    LastName,
    CASE JobTitle WHEN 0 THEN 'Software Developer' WHEN 1 THEN 'Software Architect' WHEN 2 THEN 'President' ELSE 'Staff' END AS 'Job Title',
    Salary
FROM
    Employees

You basically run an integer through something like a SWITCH statement. Put it in your stored procedure so you don't have to write the same code over and over. Hope this helps.enter code here

Sometimes CHAR type is more usable than INT - fixed size char doesn't take much storage room and you can see "enumerated" values directly in database fields. No difference from code side, but big advance while working directly with SQL tools.