SQL: ntext & length

[Logan]

When I import an Access table with a memo field into SQL, it creates a field called ntext with a length of 16. I thought this might be a problem because I want more than 16 characters in this field, but it seems to preserve the entire length of the original test, even if it's 1000 characters.

So what's the 16 mean?

Anyone?

 

[SubSpace]

As far as I know the length is meaningless and can't be edited. An ntext field is a Unicode text field that can contain up to 1,073,741,823 characters, which would take 2 GB of storage space.

ntext fields can't be referenced in WHERE clauses of queries, so basically it's the same sort of thing as an Access Memo except that Memos can only contain 65,535 characters.

Possibly you don't need the Unicode version of the text field, in which case you can convert to 'text' field type instead.

 

[jortschappin]

16 stands for 16 bytes, which is the length of the text-pointer value that references ntext.
See also: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnsqlpro03/html/sp03g8.asp