Using a varchar(MAX) or a varbinary(MAX) to store an length-undefined string within SQL Server

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+3 Q:

Using a varchar(MAX) or a varbinary(MAX) to store an length-undefined string within SQL Server

Hi There!

I am making a CMS of sorts and, of course, it will have a blog. So, this might be a pretty noob question, but, from a database optimization point of view, would you use a varchar(max) or a varbinary(max) to store the body of a blog post?

+4 A:

I would use an NVarChar(MAX) myself, to account for Unicode too; but you can certainly use VarChar(MAX) if you don't need Unicode. VarBinary would be more for if you had non-text data. You could also use Text or NText, but those have been deprecated since sql2005.

Andrew Barber 2010-10-08 16:56:35

is there not any significant storage size advantage if you convert the string to binary?

Vintharas 2010-10-08 16:58:43

Unless you are compressing it no, there is not. The VarChar(MAX) data type (which, by the way, is totally different from the regular VarChar(x) type) is made for storing and retrieving lots of text.

Andrew Barber 2010-10-08 17:02:41

Aha! Great, thank you! That was very useful!

Vintharas 2010-10-08 17:04:04

ansaurus

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Using a varchar(MAX) or a varbinary(MAX) to store an length-undefined string within SQL Server

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