what is the format of Geometry data type of SQLServer 2008

Question

I want to know, In which format the Geographic data stored in geometry data type of SQLServer 2008.it looks like a long string,like 0xE6100010466DFEOA4089663524....... for one polygon. My second question is How can i get set of google latitudes/longitudes from this data format ?

Answer 1

It's binary data, you need to use the STAsText() method to return it as a string that contains the lat/longs, as in:

SELECT [OBJECTID]
  ,[TRACT_ID]
  ,[TRACT_NAME]
  ,[SHAPE].STAsText()
FROM [City].[dbo].[TRACTS]

To go the other way, use the STAsBinary() method.