Selecting the right data types for your tables, stored procedures, and variables not only improves performance by ensuring a correct execution plan, but it also improves data integrity by ensuring that the correct data is stored within a database. Remember, we are collecting data in order to make decisions with these insights gleaned from that data, not just to collect data for the sake of having it. Decisions you make at the beginning of a data project will follow or haunt you for the lifetime of that data, do not become a data driven statistic.