4000 character limit

Question

4000 character limit

jacques-855279

SSC Enthusiast

Points: 133
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November 27, 2008 at 12:33 am

#196827

Hi Guys,
I have a cms'd website that uses a sql2000 database to store all the pages' content in a table. The data type on the column with the page text in it is set to ntext but has a limit of 4000 characters. I have tried text and varchar(8000) as well, but that still seems to have a limit of 4000. With varchar(8000) it seems to work, but once there is more than 4000 character being inserted, some of the characters at the end turn into strange symbols:ermm: Sort of like a diamond shape with a question mark in.
Does anyone know how i could solve this problem?

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Gail Shaw SSC Guru Points: 1004514 More actions · Answer 1

ntext has a limit of 2GB. If the string is getting trimmed at 4000 characters, then it has something to do with how you're putting the data in or how you're querying it.

Gail Shaw
Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server, MVP, M.Sc (Comp Sci)
SQL In The Wild: Discussions on DB performance with occasional diversions into recoverability

We walk in the dark places no others will enter
We stand on the bridge and no one may pass

jacques-855279 SSC Enthusiast Points: 133 More actions · Answer 2

Ok well the site was done in PHP with an ODBC DSN that points to the DB. Could it be that?

Gail Shaw SSC Guru Points: 1004514 More actions · Answer 3

Dunno. Depends on how the query's done in php.

If you run a profiler trace against the server, what are the command you see been run against the SQL server when inserting that column and when querying it.

Gail Shaw
Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server, MVP, M.Sc (Comp Sci)
SQL In The Wild: Discussions on DB performance with occasional diversions into recoverability

We walk in the dark places no others will enter
We stand on the bridge and no one may pass

jacques-855279 SSC Enthusiast Points: 133 More actions · Answer 4

a profile trace? whats that?

i think i found the problem.. it was an odbc setting that was limiting the trasactions to 4096 bytes. i changed that and it seems to work now.

Gail Shaw SSC Guru Points: 1004514 More actions · Answer 5

jacques (11/27/2008)
a profile trace? whats that?

SQL Server Profiler. It's a tool that can trace events occurring on a SQL Server.

Gail Shaw
Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server, MVP, M.Sc (Comp Sci)
SQL In The Wild: Discussions on DB performance with occasional diversions into recoverability

We walk in the dark places no others will enter
We stand on the bridge and no one may pass