title: What is the mysterious 'timestamp' datatype in Sybase?
body: <p>I recently discovered a table in our Sybase database at work that uses a column of a type 'timestamp'.  If I create a table using this mysterious timestamp datatype like this</p>
  
  <pre><code>create table dropme (
      foo timestamp,  
      roo int null
  )
  insert into dropme (roo) values(123)
  insert into dropme (roo) values(122)
  insert into dropme (roo) values(121)
  select * from dropme
  go
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I get the following from 'select * from dropme':</p>
  
  <pre><code> foo                  roo
   -------------------- -----------
     0x000100000e1ce4ea         123
     0x000100000e1ce4ed         122
     0x000100000e1ce509         121
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>0x000100000e1ce4ea does not look very timestampy to me.  Also, I see this output from 'sp_help timestamp':</p>
  
  <pre><code> Type_name Storage_type Length Prec Scale Nulls Default_name Rule_name Access_Rule_name Identity
   --------- ------------ ------ ---- ----- ----- ------------ --------- ---------------- ----------
   timestamp varbinary         8 NULL  NULL     1 NULL         NULL      NULL                   NULL
  </code></pre>
  
  <h2>My questions are the following</h2>
  
  <ol>
  <li>What the heck is a timestamp?</li>
  <li>Does it have any relation at all to time or date? </li>
  <li>Can I convert it to a datetime?</li>
  <li>If it's not a time or a date, what do you use it for?</li>
  </ol>