Comments on: SQL SERVER – A Brief Note on SET TEXTSIZE

By: SET TEXTSIZE – Good or Evil? « SQL from the Trenches

SET TEXTSIZE – Good or Evil? « SQL from the Trenches — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 19:59:15 +0000

[...] one of those articles was written by Pinal Dave (Blog | Twitter). He wrote a blogpost about SET TEXTSIZE. I wasn’t familiar with that functionality, so I decided to take it out for a [...]

By: abhIShek BandI

abhIShek BandI — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 12:28:12 +0000

USE TempDB
GO
– Create TestTable
CREATE TABLE MyTable (ID INT, MyText VARCHAR(MAX),newtext nvarchar(max))
GO
INSERT MyTable (ID, MyText, newtext )
VALUES(1, REPLICATE(’1234567890′, 100), REPLICATE(’1234567890′, 100))
GO
– Select Data
SELECT ID, MyText
FROM MyTable
GO
– Using Left
SELECT ID, LEFT(MyText, 5) MyText,LEFT(NEWTEXT,5)newtext
FROM MyTable
GO
– Set TextSize
SET TEXTSIZE 5;
SELECT ID, MyText,newtext
FROM MyTable;
SET TEXTSIZE 2147483647
GO
– Clean up
DROP TABLE MyTable
GO

By: abhIShek BandI

abhIShek BandI — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 12:19:29 +0000

Hi Pinal,

When we use TEXTSIZE in a session, this is considering only “n” bytes of each column with datatype is related to varchar or nvarchar.

below query show the same.
and when i try to use execution plan, its throws exception like …

An error occurred while executing batch. Error message is: Error processing execution plan results. The error message is:
There is an error in XML document (1, 1).
Data at the root level is invalid. Line 1, position 1.

i guess , the xml document is picking up first five characters.
correct me if am wrong view..

USE TempDB
GO
– Create TestTable
CREATE TABLE MyTable (ID INT, MyText VARCHAR(MAX),newtext nvarchar(max))
GO
INSERT MyTable (ID, MyText, newtext )
VALUES(1, REPLICATE(’1234567890′, 100), REPLICATE(’1234567890′, 100))
GO
– Select Data
SELECT ID, MyText
FROM MyTable
GO
– Using Left
SELECT ID, LEFT(MyText, 10) MyText
FROM MyTable
GO
– Set TextSize
SET TEXTSIZE 5;
SELECT ID, MyText,newtext
FROM MyTable;
SET TEXTSIZE 2147483647
GO
– Clean up
DROP TABLE MyTable
GO

By: pinaldave

pinaldave — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 09:58:13 +0000

Good Point Manoj,

I meant it for SSMS only but having your comment here complements the original blog post.

By: Daniel K

Daniel K — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 06:48:24 +0000

In addition what Pinal said, the only difference between ‘TEXTSIZE’ and ‘LEFT’ i can think of is that you can query ‘TEXTSIZE’ with ‘select @@TEXTSIZE’ where you can retrieve the integer value of the global variable.

Maybe you can use it for stored procs and such. I usually don’t use ‘TEXTSIZE’.

Cheers,
Daniel

By: Pankaj

Pankaj — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 05:49:50 +0000

Hi Pinal,
Just similar question I have related to difference between using TOP and SET ROWCOUNT. Even if they give similar result is there any difference in performance.

By: manub22

manub22 — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 05:44:02 +0000

Hi Pinal,

Both of them are not same and do not give same result.

They are different only for the SSMS text editor, but not for the Query Engine.

Check this:

– Using Left
SELECT ID, LEFT(MyText, 10) MyText
into #temp1
FROM MyTable
GO

– Set TextSize
SET TEXTSIZE 10;
SELECT ID, MyText
into #temp2
FROM MyTable;
SET TEXTSIZE 2147483647
GO

select * from #temp1
select * from #temp2
GO

You won’t get same number of character in both the table’s columns.