Question

While using sql 2005, it appears I am unable to insert more than 8000 characters in a nvarchar(max) field.

This is really puzzling. I have tried insert, update and update .write with no luck. I can’t insert it completely in the console and in .net the error I consistently get is

The data types text and varchar are incompatible in the add operator.

The insert statement is

insert into tablename (columnname) values (' long text'); 

Update:

update tablename set columnname='long text' 

Everything is always truncated at 8000 characters (the text is 11,000 characters). Running a few tests, I see that

select @@textsize

gives 2147483647

Any ideas what I might be doing wrong here?

Answer 1

Your code truncates the value somewhere. You did not include the entire code, so we cannot guess where it truncates. The usual place is parameter declarations. The correct code should be like this:

SqlCommand cmd = new SqlCommand(
     @"insert into table (column) values (@param)", conn, trn);
cmd.Paramaters.Add("@param", SqlDbType.NVarChar, -1);
cmd.Parameters["@param"].Value = myLongVariable;
cmd.ExecuteNonQuery();