Results Sets

When a property return value or method return value is an array, sp_OAGetProperty or sp_OAMethod returns a results set to the client. (Method output parameters cannot be arrays.) These procedures scan all the data values in the array to determine the appropriate SQL Server datatypes and data lengths to use for each column in the results set. For a particular column, these procedures use the datatype and length required to represent all data values in that column.

When all data values in a column share the same datatype, that datatype is used for the whole column. When data values in a column use different datatypes, the datatype of the whole column is chosen based on the following table.