Static/Shared Methods
I had been disappointed that when you use a CLR-based UDT, you didn't have access to shared/static methods, only instance methods. In the zVarchar example, I thought it would be good to be able to use the following:
DECLARE @TextVar zVarchar
SELECT @TextVar.Compress('Some value I want to compress')
This would be similar to how you'd use Decimal.Round() in the framework.
Well, Venkatesh (from MS) pointed out to me that you can. The shared/static methods are available via the older :: syntax directly off the class name. That's the syntax that was used for all method calls in Beta 1. So you can do the following:
SELECT zVarChar::Compress('Some value I want to compress')
That's even better as it doesn't require an instantiation.