More Newbie Questions

Two questions --

Why is it that some of my tables are not updateable, and some are??

And I'm told that there is no "memo" type field for SQLServer, and 8000
characters is the limit. Unless I go to blob or binary. What does that
entail, and what are the consequences?

Thanks!

JA> Why is it that some of my tables are not updateable, and some are??

There could be more than one reason depending on how you are doing the
updating and what you mean by "not updateable". I'll take a guess that you
are using a UI such as Enterprise Manager or Access that allows you to edit
a table. In that case you won't be able to make changes unless your table
has a unique key (constraint or index). Every table should always have a
unique key otherwise it isn't possible to guarantee that individual rows can
be updated. The solution is to add a primary key constraint to the table.

If I'm wrong then please explain how you are attempting to update the table
and what happens when you try (do you get an error message for example).

> And I'm told that there is no "memo" type field for SQLServer, and 8000
> characters is the limit. Unless I go to blob or binary. What does that
> entail, and what are the consequences?

VARCHAR columns are limited to 8000 characters. For text up to 2GB in size
you can use the TEXT or NTEXT datatype. TEXT isn't as easy to use in your
SQL code as VARCHAR is and there are some limitations on what you can and
cannot do - for example some of the string functions won't work with TEXT
values. Lookup the TEXT datatype in Books Online.

--
David Portas
SQL Server MVP
--|||David,

You're right, I'm using Access 2000. I made a table with a primary key and
had no problem adding data.

I looked up TEXT and NTEXT on Books Online. I don't guess I know enough to
see the problems. The field is for product descriptions that are over 8000
characters (quite a few are). They have HTML tags in them, and are displayed
on an asp webpage. Would there be any problems with that?

Thanks, JA

"David Portas" <REMOVE_BEFORE_REPLYING_dportas@.acm.org> wrote in message
news:tMSdne7GYNyvpQXfRVn-1w@.giganews.com...
>> Why is it that some of my tables are not updateable, and some are??
> There could be more than one reason depending on how you are doing the
> updating and what you mean by "not updateable". I'll take a guess that
> you are using a UI such as Enterprise Manager or Access that allows you to
> edit a table. In that case you won't be able to make changes unless your
> table has a unique key (constraint or index). Every table should always
> have a unique key otherwise it isn't possible to guarantee that individual
> rows can be updated. The solution is to add a primary key constraint to
> the table.
> If I'm wrong then please explain how you are attempting to update the
> table and what happens when you try (do you get an error message for
> example).
>> And I'm told that there is no "memo" type field for SQLServer, and 8000
>> characters is the limit. Unless I go to blob or binary. What does that
>> entail, and what are the consequences?
> VARCHAR columns are limited to 8000 characters. For text up to 2GB in size
> you can use the TEXT or NTEXT datatype. TEXT isn't as easy to use in your
> SQL code as VARCHAR is and there are some limitations on what you can and
> cannot do - for example some of the string functions won't work with TEXT
> values. Lookup the TEXT datatype in Books Online.
> --
> David Portas
> SQL Server MVP
> --