enum for a column

Is there a way to do something like an enum for a column?
I have a column that should contain one of a fixed set of values. The set of
values won't change and there is only one column in one table that uses this
set of values.
So I was thinking that there wasn't much point in creating a new table just
for this set of values. I could set the data type of the column to a fixed
size char and create a check constraint that tests for each possible value.
There are 20 values in the set so the constraint will be tedious to write.
But there is a notion of order to the set. i.e. value 1 < value 2 < value
N.
So what I really want is an enum like in C++ or C#.
What's the closest approximate in T-SQL?the closest thing to an enum in TSQL is a check constraint.
if you use IN the definition isn't that much more tedious than an enum
definition in C#--you still have to list all of the possible values. For
example,
create table t1
(
f1 int identity(1,1) not null
constraint pk_t1 primary key clustered,
f2 char(5) not null
constraint ck_f2 check (f2 in ('NORTH', 'SOUTH', 'EAST', 'WEST'))
)
"Jonathan Dodds" wrote:

> Is there a way to do something like an enum for a column?
> I have a column that should contain one of a fixed set of values. The set
of
> values won't change and there is only one column in one table that uses th
is
> set of values.
> So I was thinking that there wasn't much point in creating a new table jus
t
> for this set of values. I could set the data type of the column to a fixed
> size char and create a check constraint that tests for each possible value
.
> There are 20 values in the set so the constraint will be tedious to write.
> But there is a notion of order to the set. i.e. value 1 < value 2 < value
> N.
> So what I really want is an enum like in C++ or C#.
> What's the closest approximate in T-SQL?
>
>