What do you understand by "sql_variant" datatype in SQL Server?

sql_variant is a datatype in SQL server,a column of type sql_variant may contain rows of different data types. For example, a column defined as sql_variant can store int, binary, and char value. sql_variant can have a maximum length of 8016 bytes. This includes both the base type information and the base type value. The maximum length of the actual base type value is 8,000 bytes.