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Note up front, my question turns out to be similar to SO question 1668172 . This is a design question that surely must have popped up for others before, yet I couldn't find an answer that fits my situation. I want to record date-of-birth in my application, with several 'levels' of information: NULL value, i.e. DoB is unkown 1950-??-?? Only the DoB year value is known, date/month aren't ????-11-23 Just a month, day, or combination of the two, but without a year 1950-11-23 Full DoB is known The technologies I'm using for my app are as follows: Asp.NET 4 (C#), probably with MVC Some ORM solution, probably Linq-to-sql or NHibernate's MSSQL Server 2008, at first just Express edition Possibilities for the SQL bit that crossed my mind so far: 1) Use one nullable varchar column e.g. 1950-11-23 , and replace unkowns with 'X's, e.g. XXXX-11-23 or 1950-XX-XX 2) Use three nullable int columns e.g. 1950 , 11 , and 23 3) Use an INT column for year, plus a datetime column for full known DoBs For the C# end of this problem I merely got to these two options: A) Use a string property to represent DoB, convert only for view purposes. B) Use a custom(?) struct or class for DoB with three nullable integers C) Use a nullable DateTime alongside a nullable integer for year The solutions seem to form matched pairs at 1A , 2B or 3C . Of course 1A isn't a nice solution, but it does set a baseline. Any tips and links are highly appreciated. Well, if they're related, anyhow :) Edit, abo

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