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SQL Server database truncated a big base64 string [duplicate]

How do you view ALL text from an NTEXT or NVARCHAR(max) in SQL Server Management Studio? By default, it only seems to return the first few hundred characters (255?) but sometimes I just want a quick way of viewing the whole field, without having to write a program to do it. Even SSMS 2012 still has this problem :(

I was able to get the full text (99,208 chars) out of a NVARCHAR(MAX) column by selecting (Results To Grid) just that column and then right-clicking on it and then saving the result as a CSV file. To view the result open the CSV file with a text editor (NOT Excel). Funny enough, when I tried to run the same query, but having Results to File enabled, the output was truncated using the Results to Text limit.
The work-around that #MartinSmith described as a comment to the (currently) accepted answer didn't work for me (got an error when trying to view the full XML result complaining about "The '[' character, hexadecimal value 0x5B, cannot be included in a name").

Quick trick-
SELECT CAST('<A><![CDATA[' + CAST(LogInfo as nvarchar(max)) + ']]></A>' AS xml)
FROM Logs
WHERE IDLog = 904862629

In newer versions of SSMS it can be configured in the (Query/Query Options/Results/Grid/Maximum Characters Retrieved) menu:
Old versions of SSMS
Options (Query Results/SQL Server/Results to Grid Page)
To change the options for the current queries, click Query Options on the Query menu, or right-click in the SQL Server Query window and select Query Options.
...
Maximum Characters Retrieved
Enter a number from 1 through 65535 to specify the maximum number of characters that will be displayed in each cell.
Maximum is, as you see, 64k. The default is much smaller.
BTW Results to Text has even more drastic limitation:
Maximum number of characters displayed in each column
This value defaults to 256. Increase this value to display larger result sets without truncation. The maximum value is 8,192.

I have written an add-in for SSMS and this problem is fixed there. You can use one of 2 ways:
you can use "Copy current cell 1:1" to copy original cell data to clipboard:
http://www.ssmsboost.com/Features/ssms-add-in-copy-results-grid-cell-contents-line-with-breaks
Or, alternatively, you can open cell contents in external text editor (notepad++ or notepad) using "Cell visualizers" feature: http://www.ssmsboost.com/Features/ssms-add-in-results-grid-visualizers
(feature allows to open contents of field in any external application, so if you know that it is text - you use text editor to open it. If contents is binary data with picture - you select view as picture. Sample below shows opening a picture):

Return data as XML
SELECT CONVERT(XML, [Data]) AS [Value]
FROM [dbo].[FormData]
WHERE [UID] LIKE '{my-uid}'
Make sure you set a reasonable limit in the SSMS options window, depending on the result you're expecting.
This will work if the text you're returning doesn't contain unencoded characters like & instead of & that will cause the XML conversion to fail.
Returning data using PowerShell
For this you will need the PowerShell SQL Server module installed on the machine on which you'll be running the command.
If you're all set up, configure and run the following script:
Invoke-Sqlcmd -Query "SELECT [Data] FROM [dbo].[FormData] WHERE [UID] LIKE '{my-uid}'" -ServerInstance "database-server-name" -Database "database-name" -Username "user" -Password "password" -MaxCharLength 10000000 | Out-File -filePath "C:\db_data.txt"
Make sure you set the -MaxCharLength parameter to a value that suits your needs.

I was successful with this method today. It's similar to the other answers in that it also converts the contents to XML, just using a different method. As I didn't see FOR XML PATH mentioned amongst the answers, I thought I'd add it for completeness:
SELECT [COL_NVARCHAR_MAX]
FROM [SOME_TABLE]
FOR XML PATH(''), ROOT('ROOT')
This will deliver a valid XML containing the contents of all rows, nested in an outer <ROOT></ROOT> element. The contents of the individual rows will each be contained within an element that, for this example, is called <COL_NVARCHAR_MAX>. The name of that can be changed using an alias via AS.
Special characters like &, < or > or similar will be converted to their respective entities. So you may have to convert <, > and & back to their original character, depending on what you need to do with the result.
EDIT
I just realized that CDATA can be specified using FOR XML too. I find it a bit cumbersome though. This would do it:
SELECT 1 as tag, 0 as parent, [COL_NVARCHAR_MAX] as [COL_NVARCHAR_MAX!1!!CDATA]
FROM [SOME_TABLE]
FOR XML EXPLICIT, ROOT('ROOT')

PowerShell Alternative
This is an old post and I read through the answers. Still, I found it a bit too painful to output multi-line large text fields unaltered from SSMS. I ended up writing a small C# program for my needs, but got to thinking it could probably be done using the command line. Turns out, it is fairly easy to do so with PowerShell.
Start by installing the SqlServer module from an administrative PowerShell.
Install-Module -Name SqlServer
Use Invoke-Sqlcmd to run your query:
$Rows = Invoke-Sqlcmd -Query "select BigColumn from SomeTable where Id = 123" `
-MaxCharLength 2147483647 -ConnectionString $ConnectionString
This will return an array of rows that you can output to the console as follows:
$Rows[0].BigColumn
Or output to a file as follows:
$Rows[0].BigColumn | Out-File -FilePath .\output.txt -Encoding UTF8
The result is a beautiful un-truncated text written to a file for viewing/editing. I am sure there is a similar command to save back the text to SQL Server, although that seems like a different question.
EDIT: It turns out that there was an answer by #dvlsc that described this approach as a secondary solution. I think because it was listed as a secondary answer, is the reason I missed it in the first place. I am going to leave my answer which focuses on the PowerShell approach, but wanted to at least give credit where it was due.

If you only have to view it, I've used this:
print cast(dbo.f_functiondeliveringbigformattedtext(seed) as text)
The end result is that I get line feeds and all the content in the messages window of SMSS.
Of course, it only allows for a single cell - if you want to do a single cell from a number of rows, you could do this:
declare #T varchar(max)=''
select #T=#T
+ isnull(dbo.f_functiondeliveringbigformattedtext(x.a),'NOTHINGFOUND!')
+ replicate(char(13),4)
from x -- table containing multiple rows and a value in column a
print #T
I use this to validate JSON strings generated by SQL code. Too hard to read otherwise!

Use visual studio code with sql server plugin. Super usefull for jsons

Alternative 1: Right Click to copy cell and Paste into Text Editor (hopefully with utf-8 support)
Alternative 2: Right click and export to CSV File
Alternative 3: Use SUBSTRING function to visualize parts of the column. Example:
SELECT SUBSTRING(fileXml,2200,200) FROM mytable WHERE id=123456

The easiest way to quickly view large varchar/text column:
declare #t varchar(max)
select #t = long_column from table
print #t

c# mysql AddWithValue unicode

I'm working with C# and MySQL now. I've tried to search around the internet for day to find out why I can't use AddWithValue method to add unicode characters because when I manually add it in MySQL, it works! But back in the C# code with MySQL connector for .NET it doesn't work. Other than the unicode characters is fine.
cmd.CommandText = "INSERT INTO tb_osm VALUES (#id, #timestamp, #user)";
cmd.Parameters.AddWithValue("#id", osmobj.ID);
cmd.Parameters.AddWithValue("#timestamp", osmobj.TimeStamp);
cmd.Parameters.AddWithValue("#user", osmobj.User);
cmd.ExecuteNonQuery();
For example: osmbj.User = "ສະບາຍດີ", it will be "???????" in the database.
Please T^T

does this link help you?
read/write unicode data in MySql
Basically it says, you should append your connection string with charset=utf8;
Like so:
id=my_user;password=my_password;database=some_db123;charset=utf8;

You have to be sure that unicode characters are supported at every level of the process, all the way from the input into C# to the column stored in MySql.
The C# level is easy, because strings are already utf-16 by default. As long as you're not using some weird gui toolkit, reading from a bad file or network stream, or running in a weird console app environment with no unicode support, you'll be in good shape.
The next layer is the parameter definition. Here, you're better off avoiding the AddWithValue() method, anyway. The link pertains the Sql Server, but the same reasoning applies to MySql, even if MySql is less strict with your data than it should be. You should use an Add() override that lets you explicitly the declare the type of your parameters as NVarChar, instead of making the ADO.Net provider try to guess.
Next up is the connection between your application and the database. Here, you want to make sure to include the charset=utf8 clause (or better) as part of the connection string.
Then we need to think about the collation of the database itself. You have to be sure that an NVarChar column in MySql will be able to support your data. One of the answers from the question at previous link also covers how to handle this.
Finally, make sure the column is defined with the NVarChar type, instead of just VarChar.

Yes, utf8 at all stages -- byte-encoding in client, conversion on the wire (charset=utf8), and on the column. I do not know whether C# converts from utf16 to utf8 before exposing the characters; if it does not, then charset=utf16 (or no setting) may be the correct step.
Because you got multiple ?, the likely cause is trying to transform non-latin1 characters into a CHARACTER SET latin1 column. Since latin1 has no codes for Lao, ? was substituted. Probably you said nothing about the column, but depended on the DEFAULT on the table and/or database, which happened to be latin1.
The ສະບາຍດີ is lost and cannot be recovered from ???????.
Once you have changed things, check that it is stored correctly by doing SELECT col, HEX(col) .... For the string ສະບາຍດີ, you should get hex E0BAAAE0BAB0E0BA9AE0BAB2E0BA8DE0BA94E0BAB5. Notice how that is groups of E0BAxx, which is the range of utf8 values for Lao.
If you still have troubles, please provide the HEX for further analysis.

Wrong data through Oledb c#

I'm trying to read CSV files through OleDb and C#. I'm able to read most of the files perfectly but only in some cases I'm getting empty cell value(even in this file some cells value are coming but not all) even if value is there. Have any of you faced such issue with oleDB and CSV files?? If yes, then please tell the solution.

OLEDB likes to guess at the data types based on the values found in the first few rows, and anything that doesn't fit that data type after it's guessed comes back null/empty.
So if you had a csv like the following...
1,A
2,B
3,C
4,D
5A,E
5B,F
6,G
7,H
depending on registry settings (I'm more familiar with this issue for Excel, not sure if it's configured the same way for CSV), OLEDB might read the first 8 records, and decide the first column is numeric because the majority of the data is numeric, and the second is char, and once it sets those data types, if it reads a non-numeric value for that first column, it doesn't throw any error, just returns the value as null.
If this is your issue, I believe you can work around it by using IMEX=1 in your connection string to force mixed data to be read as text, and then when you retrieve the values, I always use GetValue, as opposed to GetString or GetDouble, etc.

Storing HTML formatted text in database

I am building a web site similar to Craigslist. I would like to know how to store the html formatted text (bold / italics / font size etc) in a sql 2008 database?
In order words, the user would enter their text, format it with font size, bold etc and save the information. Whats the most efficient way to store that in a database?

Save it to a nvarchar(max) field. Make sure you use parameterized queries for security. Read http://www.aspnet101.com/2007/03/parameterized-queries-in-asp-net/

Make sure only to allow a certain limited number of HTML tags or else you risk getting a cross script injection.
For example, don't allow your user to input <script> or <style> tags. I suggest you read more about cross script injection before you move on! Good luck

I would probably just store the ad text as a nvarchar(max) datatype

I would simply stuff it, as is, into a NVARCHAR(MAX) field.
Of course, you would use a parameterized query for this.

I would say just use a NVARCHAR(max) or Text data type as opposed to the XML data type.
This will allow easy access to the content where as the xml datatype would need converted somewhere along the line.

I would put it in a nvarchar(MAX) field if you are using SQL Server 2008 or above otherwise. If you are using SQL Server 2005 or lower and if the number of characters will be below 2000 you could use an nvarchar(2000) type. If that is too restricting use a text type.

knowing if a string will be truncated when updating database

I'm working on a software that takes a csv file and put the data in a sqlserver. i'm testing it with bad data now and when i make a data string to long (in a line) to be imported in the database i got the error : String or binary data would be truncated the statement has been terminate. that's normal and that's what i should expect. Now i wanna detecte those error before the update to the database. Is there any clever way to detecte this?
The way my software work is that i importe every line in a dataset then show the user the data that will be imported. Then he can click a button to do the actual update. i then do a dataAdapter.Update( Dataset, "something" ) to make the update to the database.
The probleme is that the error row terminate all the update and report the error. So i want to detect the error before i do the update to the server so the other rows will be inserted.
thanks

You will have to check the columns of each row. See if one exceeds the maximum specified in the database, and if yes, exclude it from being inserted.
A different solution would be to explicitly truncate the data and insert the truncated content, which could be done by using SubString.

The only way that I know of is to pre-check the information schema for the character limit:
Select
Column_Name,
Character_Maximum_Length
From
Information_Schema.Columns
Where
Table_Name = 'YourTableName'

What you need is the column metadata.
MSDN: SqlConnection.GetSchema Method

Or, if you have opened a recordset on your database, another solution would be to browse the field object to use its length to truncate the string. For example, with ADO recordset/VB code, you could have some code like this one:
myRecordset.fields(myField) = left(myString, myRecordset.fields(myField).DefinedSize)