Database Administrators Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for database professionals who wish to improve their database skills and learn from others in the community. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
I have table with the columns of type NTEXT. And for some peculiar reasons, the client wants to migrate the column type to NVARCHAR(MAX).
While doing so, what all potential threat should I be careful about?
Is there any possibility of data loss for the NVARCHAR(MAX) limitations?
No. You can alter your tables (Sql 2005+) cf this.
Or, for your convenience:
alter table my_table alter column my_ntext_column nvarchar(max);
Or you can supply a view which casts the ntext columns to nvarchar(max) to make the client happy and leave your database unchanged.
NOT NULL setting and/or have the collation changed if it is not the same as the database's default collation. Please see my post "Beware! Beware of Unintended Changes When Altering Columns!" for full details and examples.
Jan 31, 2019 at 16:24
"peculiar reason"? Only that ntext is deprecated and damn difficult to work with?
It's a lossless conversion. If you are unsure, use the SSMS GUI designer to generate scripts for you.
Is there any possibility of data loss for the NVARCHAR(MAX) limitations?
No. NVARCHAR(MAX) allows for twice as much text (2^31-1 vs. 2^30-1) as ntext.
