Using Built-in Functions

SQL Server provides a variety of built-in functions that help you perform certain operations quickly and easily. These functions fall into the following categories:

• System functions, most of which return information from the system tables
• String functions, for manipulating char, varchar, binary, and varbinary values
• Text and image functions, for manipulating text and image values
• Mathematical functions, for trigonometry, geometry, and other number handling
• Date functions, for manipulating datetime and smalldatetime values
• A conversion function (CONVERT), for converting expressions from one datatype to another and for formatting dates in a wide variety of styles