select string size

[Anon]

Hi.

Trough a connection with SQLserver database, i use a select query to get a string that is quite large (500).
The problem is that when i try to display what i get, it only see 254 characters.
here is a simplified version of the code:

<?
mssql_connect ("NIAGARA", "sav", "sav"); //I open the connection
mssql_select_db ("articles"); //I select the database

$tout=mssql_query ("select * from Produits"); // I execute the sql query to get one complete row
$qant=mssql_fetch_array ($tout); // I store this row in an array

echo "texte:$qant[10]"; //I display the last column of the array, where the string I want to get is
?>

[Anon]

The standard string (or 'char' in mysql) length is 0-254 chars, this goes back eons so you should consider using something along the lines of 'text' as a field type for the database. Text contain 0-60k+ chars and blob extends that a large way further.

[Anon]

Great! it worked.
However, I find this a little bit strange:
when I specify the type of the field, I can choose "varchar", withe a size up to 8000.
When I select "text" it is locked to 16.
Strange.
Well, whatever.Now it works and I thank you for that.

[dcaillouet]

FYI - In case you were curious, Text, NText and Image data is not stored on the data row but on a separate collection of pages. All that is stored in the data row is a 16-byte pointer. That is why it is locked to 16.