Yesterday, in Friday Afternoon team meeting. I was asked question by one of application developer
“I am asked in new coding standards to use VARHCAR(MAX) instead of TEXT. Is VARCHAR(MAX) big enough to store TEXT field?”
Well, I realize that I was not clear enough in my coding standard. It is extremely important for coding standards to be clear and have a enough explanation that developer have no doubt about them. I updated coding standards after the meeting. The answer is
“Yes, VARCHAR(MAX) is big enough to accommodate TEXT field. TEXT, NTEXT and IMAGE data types of SQL Server 2000 will be deprecated in future version of SQL Server, SQL Server 2005 provides backward compatibility to data types but it is recommanded to use new data types which are VARHCAR(MAX), NVARCHAR(MAX) and VARBINARY(MAX).”
There are more reasons to use VARHCAR(MAX) though this was verbal answer to technical question in our general meeting where the focus was “Web Application Architecture and SQL Server”.
Reference : Pinal Dave (https://darkslategrey-bat-805937.hostingersite.com)
