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Are there any disadvantages to always using nvarchar(MAX)?

Is there a general downside by chosing ‘ntext’ as column type instead of a type that contains chars but with a limited max size like ‘char’ or ‘varchar’?

I’m not sure whether a limited column size is applyable to all my colums. Therefore I would use ‘ntext’ for all columns containing text. Might this lead to problems in the future?

(I’m using Linq-To-SQL in a ASP.net Webforms application)

Answer 1

NTEXT is being deprecated for a start, so you should use NVARCHAR(MAX) instead.

You should always try to use the smallest datatype possible for a column. If you do need to support more than 4000 characters in a field, then you’ll need to use NVARCHAR(MAX). If you don’t need to support more than 4000 characters, then use NVARCHAR(n).

I believe NTEXT would always be stored out of row, incurring an overhead when querying. NVARCHAR(MAX) can be stored in row if possible. If it can’t fit in row, then SQL Server will push it off row. See this MSDN article.

Edit:
For NVARCHAR, the maximum supported explicit size is 4000. After that, you need to use MAX which takes you up to 2^31-1 bytes.
For VARCHAR, the maximum supported explicit size is 8000 before you need to switch to MAX.