nVaChar, varchar and nText
I've been asked what the differences are between nVaChar, varchar and nText. The answer is:
NVARCHAR uses 2-byte characters so only half the "max" data (4000 vs 8000) characters can be stored. If you must support UTF-8 character sets, NVARCHAR is the way to go. If not, stick with VARCHAR for single-character character sets.TEXT is intended for data in excess of 8000 bytes, but it can't be indexed, so you'll have to design a lookup scheme other than searching for matches in the TEXT column.
Source: SQL Team.com
The max data length for a row is 8000 chars (approx), so if you had a varchar column of 8000 then you would not be able to have any other columns. when the amount of data in a row exceeds 8000, it will get truncated.
this rule does not apply when usig TEXT data type as this is a BLOB, and in effect all that is stored in the row is a pointer to the BLOB.
When using TEXT fields, you will need to use FULL-TEXT catalogues for indexing, and the FULL-TEXT catalog commands, such as CONTAINS only work on TEXT fields.
The max data length for a row is 8000 chars (approx), so if you had a varchar column of 8000 then you would not be able to have any other columns. when the amount of data in a row exceeds 8000, it will get truncated.
this rule does not apply when usig TEXT data type as this is a BLOB, and in effect all that is stored in the row is a pointer to the BLOB.
When using TEXT fields, you will need to use FULL-TEXT catalogues for indexing, and the FULL-TEXT catalog commands, such as CONTAINS only work on TEXT fields.