Question

I have a column (col1) with nvarchar(max).

I am trying to do

DECLARE @my_string NVARCHAR(max)
set @my_string = N'test'

UPDATE dbo.tab1 
SET col1 = @my_string + ISNULL(col1, N'')

no luck , I have no idea why it is happening. @marc_s

The string value in col1 getting truncated after 250 characters. This happening in both SQL Server 2005 and 2008.

Answer 1

First of all – I’m not seeing this behavior you’re reporting. How and why do you think your column gets truncated at 250 characters?? Are you using a tool to inspect the data that might be truncating the output??

You could check the length of the column:

SELECT col1, LEN(col1) FROM dbo.tab1

Is it really only 250 characters long???

Also: you’re mixing VARCHAR (in @my_string) and NVARCHAR (col1) which can lead to messy results. Avoid this!

Next: if you want NVARCHAR(MAX), you need to cast your other strings to that format.

Try this:

DECLARE @my_string NVARCHAR(200)
set @my_string = N'test'

UPDATE dbo.tab1 
SET col1 = CAST(@my_string AS NVARCHAR(MAX)) + ISNULL(col1, N'')

As I said – in my tests, I didn’t need to do this – but maybe it works in your case?