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Large Text Fields

Large Text Fields

Question:
How do I create a text field of greater than 8,000 characters (in v7.0)? I attempted to use the “text” data type, but my code returned an error saying the maximum size was 8,000.

Here’s the code:

CREATE TABLE X (	X_ID int IDENTITY(1,1),	X_DESC text (60000) NOT NULL)GO

Answer:
SQL Server is returning a bogus error message. The real error has to do with your syntax. When specifying text you don’t specify a size.

You can see the real error message if you reduce the number 60000 to 5. Then you will get this message:

Server: Msg 2716, Level 16, State 1, Line 1Column or parameter #2: Cannot specify a column width on data type text.

Instead, simply specify it as text without the parentheses and the number. The actual size of the storage used for the text field will depend on how much data you actually put in the column.

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