Database Growth Excessive When Changing Varchar Length From 50 To 100.
Aug 9, 2007
Hi all,
I'm trying to get an understanding of a serious problem I have with a large DB in production. This is going to be obvious to someone (everyone probably) <bg>
I have a table which consists of numerous varchars and ints but also a Text type field. This table resides in a SQL 2000 Database. This DB currently has a data file size of 16Gb and a Transaction Log size of 17Gb. When I edit the table and increase the size of a Varchar field from 50 to 100 these files grow to more than double their size!
Hi Everyone,I have a question about dynamically changing the length of a varchar(n)field, in case the value I'm trying to insert is too big and will givea "truncated" error, but before the error is given! i.e. Is there somekind of a way to "test" the length of the field while Inserting thevalue into it, and to have it automatically increase its length to thelength of the value being inserted, in case the value is too big?I've been able to do this in a "primitive" way, simply by identifyingthe specific error number in case the value is being truncated, andthen increasing the length of the varchar(n) field by using the ALTERcommand, and then duplicating the insert statement, but is there astandard (shorter) way of doing this?Here is my code (I'm working in an ASP environment):<%var_txt = "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz12345678789"sql = "Insert Into Table1 (text) Values ('" & var_txt & "')"On Error Resume Nextconn.Execute sqlIf err = -2147217833 ThenResponse.Write "Error Recognized Successfully!<br /><br />"sql = "ALTER TABLE Table1 ALTER COLUMN text VARCHAR(" &Len(var_txt) &") NOT NULL"On Error Resume Nextconn.Execute sqlIf err<>0 ThenResponse.Write "Error while trying to alter Column:<br/>" & err & "= " & err.description & "<br />"ElseResponse.Write "Column altered successfully to: " &Len(var_txt) &"<br />"sql = "Insert Into Table1 (text) Values ('" & var_txt &"')"On Error Resume Nextconn.Execute sqlIf err<>0 ThenResponse.Write "<br />Error number 2:<br />" &err.description &"<br />"ElseResponse.Write "Now it was added successfully!HaHa!<br />"End IfEnd IfElseResponse.Write "Success."End If%>Thanks in advance!
Hi, I have an ASP.NET application that uses VARCHAR extensively in the tables and, more importantly, stored procedures (a couple hundred of them).
This app needs to start accepting foreign language in some areas, so I was wondering if there was some way to go through the tables and, more importantly, the stored procedures and change all "VARCHAR" references to "NVARCHAR" ?
Are the stored procedures stored as a text file somewhere on the server? If so I could use some sort of "replace" software utility to go through and change all VARCHAR to NVARCHAR
I was looking to change the file growth setting in our AlwaysOn environment databases.We have a single availability group, one primary and one secondary replica. I learned that when changing the file growth setting on the primary databases (data file), the change flows though to the database on the secondary replica.However after doing the same with the log files, the file growth setting changed on the primary but the change did NOT propagate to the secondary.
Is the solution to apply the change directly to the secondary?here's the T-SQL code I used:
ALTER DATABASE myDB MODIFY FILE ( NAME = N'myDB_log', FILEGROWTH = 512MB ); GO SQL Server 2012 (11.0.5532)
i have problem regarding the row length and varchar. my problem is on every new row i have +6 more character on one of my field then the last record. and BOL says i can only have 8060 character per row. What i can not use the full lenght of varchar(8000) on field.
Hi, I am trying to insert text into a varchar(5000) column from a JAVA program. I am using MSDE database (which I believe is a strip down version of SQL7.0), with a variation of ms SQL Server 3.70.06.90 ODBC driver and tds jdbc driver from inet software. With the ODBC driver, I don't get any error but the data saved is only 255 characters. With the latter driver, I get a data truncation error and nothing is saved.
Hi,I have a pretty straightforward question to do with variable length fields I hope someone can help me with:When using varchar (or nvarchar), is there any point in specifying a smaller length than the maximum? Does it save space or improve performance at all?ThanksRedit: I suppose the max rowsize is an issue. any others?
a simple question to ask for varchar type. I want to update a varchar type parameter to a stored procedure to update a table. My question is , if I don't specify the length. and the varchar type will be trimmed to only 1 character. I thought it's supposed to be 50 by default? Besides if I need to compare varchar values, do I need to specify length as well? Cheers.
Hi all,I need to change a varchar from 35 to 50. In the SQL Server books online it says that SQL Server actually creates a new table when youchange the length. I ran a test in a test database and it appears theonly thing that changes is the length. All the data remains in tact.The table with the column I want to modify is very critical. Is thereany chance I would loose data if I change the length to a larger size? Iam making a back up of the table just in case. Thanks,Kelly
Hi, all I am seting up a table with email message, I am wondering what is the max length for varchar field. I am so reluctant to use text field, since when I run query for the descriptiona in sql analyzer, text field cannot be fully display in column. Any tricks to share? Thanks Betty
Hi, everyone, I want to know is there a way for me to set varchar to store more than 8000 characters? (I did checked from sql server books online and i know that the maximum storage for varchar, but i just want to know is there any exceptional way for me to store more than that).
I have a column set to varchar(12) so I can ensure that the length of the string entered will never be more than 12 characters but I want to limit the string to a minimum of 8 characters, so I end up with a string that is from 8-12 characters long. How do I ensure the minimum length of 8 characters? I'm using SQL Server 2005 if that helps. I tried adding a check constraint like so:
DATALENGTH(UserName) >= 8
But I keep getting an error when I save the table, so any help would be very much appreciated.
Hi all, I have a strange situation. I have a field in the database that has to be a string type field of around 4000 characters.
So naturally I setup the field as type: varchar length: 4000
However when I try to put any text in this field I find that I can put no more than 1023 characters of ascii text in there.
To check if this was a max record length prob I setup a test table with only 2 fields: ID: int, PK, Identity longVarchar: varchar, 4000
and tried to put some ascii text into the field called longVarchar. Again the most I could put in was 1023 characters!
Thinking that it could just be that SQL svr box that was wacky, I tried it on another one with the same result.
I have tried using other field types (nvarchar, char) and have found that they all could only hold 1023 characters max, no matter what how high I defined the size of the field.
Try it out yourselves and see if you get the same result. Any useful suggestions would really be appreciated.
Hello all, I'm using SQL Server 2000 and have about 250 stored procedures that use an EMPLID parameter or variable of type varchar with a length of 4. I need to change the length to 10 instead and would like to do so without having to open every sp for editing. Is there a way to do this through SQL Server 2000? Does anyone have a script to do this? Any help would be appreciated.
I have two databases that are merged using replication, and I want to change the length of one of the fields. Can anyone think of a way of doing it that doesn't require dropping the whole publication and rebuilding it? Thanks Ed
Hi, I am trying to import data from Oracle RDB into SQL Server 2005 using SSIS. Created a ODBC data source to connect to Oracle and used DataReader Source component and ADO.net to connect to the ODBC data source.
Under the Component properties tab, the SQL Command looks something like this.
Select ID, ADDRESS, REVISED from ADDRESS
The data type for the source columns are Integer, Varchar(30) and DATE VMS.
Now when I look at the Input and Output properties window,
The External columns has the following data types.
ID - four-byte signed integer [DT_I4] ADDRESS - Unicode string [DT_WSTR], length = 0 REVISED - database timestamp [DT_DBTIMESTAMP]
The Output columns has the following data types
ID - four-byte signed integer [DT_I4] ADDRESS - Unicode string [DT_WSTR], length = 0 REVISED - database timestamp [DT_DBTIMESTAMP]
When I tried to change the length of the ADDRESS on the output column, I get the following error.
Error at Data Flow Task [DataReader Source [1]]: The data type of output columns on the component "DataReader Source" (1) cannot be changed.
Is this the default length for the Unicode string type. I was not able to load the ADDRESS column as it gets truncated before I load it into destination. Even if I use Derived or Data Conversion transformation, the ADDRESS is getting truncated before it reaches this transformation.
"Database XYZ has more than 1000 virtual log files which is excessive. Too many virtual log files can cause long startup and backup times. Consider shrinking the log and using a different growth increment to reduce the number of virtual log files."
I am currently working on a PHP based website that needs to be able to drawfrom Oracle, MS SQL Server, MySQL and given time and demand other RDBMS. Itook a lot of time and care creating a flexible and solid wrapper and amdeep into coding. The only problem is a noticed VARCHAR fields being drawnfrom SQL Server 2000 are being truncated to 255 characters.I searched around php.net and found the following :Note to Win32 Users: Due to a limitation in the underlying API used by PHP(MS DbLib C API), the length of VARCHAR fields is limited to 255. If youneed to store more data, use a TEXT field instead.(http://www.php.net/manual/en/functi...ield-length.php)The only problem with this advice is Text fields seem to be limited to 16characters in length, and I am having similar results in terms of truncationwith other character based fields that can store more than 255 characters.I am using PHP 4.3.3 running on IIS using the php_mssql.dll extensions andthe functions referenced here http://www.php.net/manual/en/ref.mssql.php.What are my options here? Has anybody worked around this or am I missingsomething obvious?James
We have a small table of about 13 million rows that needs altered. A column in the table needs to be changed from a varchar(20) to a varchar(500). When we ran the alter table script, 3 hrs later and it wasn't done running. Any suggestions on what we can do to speed up the process?
Thanks ahead of time DMW
Edit: We are running SQL Server 2000 and the db at the time was running in simple mood
My current Query takes the DATE value stored in P.CreatedDate and makes it VARCHAR, then stores it in the table. I need to format this to return YYYYMMDD. How would I go about this?
Current Code:
Code: CAST(P.CreatedDate AS VARCHAR) AS DateEntered,
I'm a beginner in SQL Server databases, my problem is this:
i'm making a database witch the frontend is an access project, the database has several stored procedures views and user functions (the normal..), but a few data, (only the experimental), last night i've noticed that the file grow from 22 MB to 89 MB, the objects are the same and also the data, the only diference was that i forgot to put in an event procedure code, the ADO method, "MoveNext", to update various records, and the loop was infinit. Is it possible that SQL statments generated by ADO make the file grow so rapidly!? If so how can i shrink it, because i've tried and and the results was 4%.
insert into DB_Growth (Database_Name, Logical_File_Name, File_Size_MB, Growth_Factor) exec (@l_sql_string)
fetch next from db_name_cursor into @l_db_name end close db_name_cursor deallocate db_name_cursor select * from DB_Growth with (nolock) if object_id('DB_Growth') is not null drop table DB_Growth set nocount off set ansi_warnings on return
insert into DB_Growth (Database_Name, Logical_File_Name, File_Size_MB, Growth_Factor) exec (@l_sql_string)
fetch next from db_name_cursor into @l_db_name end close db_name_cursor deallocate db_name_cursor select * from DB_Growth with (nolock) if object_id('DB_Growth') is not null drop table DB_Growth set nocount off set ansi_warnings on return
insert into DB_Growth (Database_Name, Logical_File_Name, File_Size_MB, Growth_Factor) exec (@l_sql_string)
fetch next from db_name_cursor into @l_db_name end close db_name_cursor deallocate db_name_cursor select * from DB_Growth with (nolock) if object_id('DB_Growth') is not null drop table DB_Growth set nocount off set ansi_warnings on return
I've got a question about the automatic database growth feature of V7. Here's an example:
I have a 1gb db that can grow to max size of 2gb. I set the auto grow option to 75% The first time the db grows it will grab 75% of the free space (1gb)
What happens if the database needs to grow again?
Will the db grow using the remaining free space (25%) or has the database reached its max size because it can't grow any further?
