[This article was contributed by the SQL Azure team.]

While this might seem like a non-announcement, the data type hierarchyid has just been added as a supported data type with SQL Azure Service Update 3, announced here. The hierarchyid data type is used to manage hierarchical data and tables that have a hierarchical structure. For example, employee manager relationships, and thread forum data.

SQL Azure also supports the hierarchyid functions as of Service Update 3. This seems obvious; you need these functions to interact with the hierarchyid data type. However, SQL Azure doesn’t currently support the .NET CLR and many of the functions might appear to be CLR functions. While these are CLR functions, they are supported.

These are the support functions for hierarchyid:

• GetAncestor
• IsDescendantOf
• ToString
• GetDescendant
• Parse
• Write
• GetLevel
• Read
• GetRoot
• GetReparentedValue

Summary

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