Important:
ntext, text, and image data types will be removed in a future version of Microsoft SQL Server. Avoid using these data types in new development work, and plan to modify applications that currently use them. Use nvarchar(max), varchar(max), and varbinary(max) instead. For more information, see Using Large-Value Data Types.

Fixed and variable-length data types for storing large non-Unicode and Unicode character and binary data. Unicode data uses the UNICODE UCS-2 character set.

ntext

Variable-length Unicode data with a maximum length of 2^30 - 1 (1,073,741,823) characters. Storage size, in bytes, is two times the number of characters entered. The SQL-2003 synonym for ntext is national text.

text

Variable-length non-Unicode data in the code page of the server and with a maximum length of 2^31-1 (2,147,483,647) characters. When the server code page uses double-byte characters, the storage is still 2,147,483,647 bytes. Depending on the character string, the storage size may be less than 2,147,483,647 bytes.

image

Variable-length binary data from 0 through 2^31-1 (2,147,483,647) bytes.

 Remarks

The following functions and statements can be used with ntext, text, or image data.

Functions	Statements
DATALENGTH	READTEXT
PATINDEX	SET TEXTSIZE
SUBSTRING	UPDATETEXT
TEXTPTR	WRITETEXT
TEXTVALID

 See Also

Reference

ALTER TABLE (Transact-SQL)
CAST and CONVERT (Transact-SQL)
CREATE TABLE (Transact-SQL)
Data Types (Transact-SQL)
DECLARE @local_variable (Transact-SQL)
DELETE (Transact-SQL)
INSERT (Transact-SQL)
LIKE (Transact-SQL)
SET @local_variable (Transact-SQL)
UPDATE (Transact-SQL)

Other Resources

Data Type Conversion (Database Engine)
Using Unicode Data

Help and Information

Getting SQL Server 2005 Assistance