Are there disadvantages to using VARCHAR(MAX) in a table?

Posted by Meiscooldude on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Meiscooldude
Published on 2010-04-03T20:57:01Z Indexed on 2010/04/03 21:03 UTC
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varchar

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nvarchar

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sql-server

Here is my predicament.

Basically, I need a column in a table to hold up an unknown length of characters. But I was curious if in Sql Server performance problems could arise using a VARCHAR(MAX) or NVARCHAR(MAX) in a column, such as: 'This time' I only need to store 3 characters and most of the time I only need to store 10 characters. But there is a small chances that It could be up to a couple thousand characters in that column, or even possibly a million, It is unpredictable. But, I can guarantee that it will not go over the 2GB limit.

I was just curious if there are any performance issues, or possibly better ways of solving this problem where available.

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