Question

I am having a strange problem. I have a function which returns a large string by concatenating several other strings.

In some cases the string is too long and is getting truncated.

For example, there is an instance when a string of length 379999 is supposed to be returned, but what I see is that the string is truncated and the length is only 65536.

I am sure that varchar(MAX) can hold a string greater that 65536, but where am I going wrong here? The function has been shown below.

[UPDATE]

this function is being used in several stored procedures, and the stored procedures are used by the crystal reports to display data.

[UPDATE END]

ALTER FUNCTION [dbo].[GetShipContSernText](
@shipContNum numeric(9)) returns Varchar(MAX) begin

declare serns cursor for


select
    serial_number
from
    serial_number_view
where
    ship_cont_num = @shipContNum
    and
    template_id is null

open serns;

declare @text varchar(MAX);
declare @serialNumber nvarchar(50);

fetch next from serns into @serialNumber;

while (@@FETCH_STATUS = 0)
begin
    -- cannot concat a null string.

    if (@text is null)
             set @text = @serialNumber; 
    else
          set @text = @text + N', ' + @serialNumber;
    end 
    fetch next from serns into @serialNumber;
end;

close serns;
deallocate serns;

return @text;
end

Answer 1

the function is indeed returning a sting more than 65536 characters, i used the LEN function and found the length to be much greater. It was the grid which was restricting the length. Now i need to find why is the crystal report truncating the string.
Bunch of thanks to Jonas 🙂