Home Forums SQL Server 2005 Development Difference between varchar(max) and varchar(8000) RE: Difference between varchar(max) and varchar(8000)

  • February 3, 2009 at 3:16 pm

    #937605

    charlesz (2/3/2009)

    Sorry about my mistake. I should not trust document from Microsoft 100%. Here is a sentence from "Tabular Data Stream Protocol Specification".

    "A type with unlimited max size, known as varchar(max), varbinary(max), nvarchar(max), which has a max size of 0xFFFF,..."

    You can get the specification from http://download.microsoft.com/download/a/e/6/ae6e4142-aa58-45c6-8dcf-a657e5900cd3/%5BMS-TDS%5D.pdf (page 36)

    By the way, Our product communicate with SQL Server using TDS protocol, we do not really care about how long varchar(max) and nvarchar(max) columns can hold.

    Maybe you should avoid using documentation of the "Tabular Data Stream Protocol Specification" to answer questions about how the SQL Server 2005 Database Engine works, instead of the actual SQL Server 2005 Books Online Documentation.