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SQL Server binary and large-value data

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SQL Server provides the max specifier, which expands the storage capacity of the varchar, nvarchar, and varbinary data types. varchar(max), nvarchar(max), and varbinary(max) are collectively called large-value data types. You can use the large-value data types to store up to 2^31-1 bytes of data.

SQL Server 2008 introduces the FILESTREAM attribute, which is not a data type, but rather an attribute that can be defined on a column, allowing large-value data to be stored on the file system instead of in the database.

In this section

Modifying large-value (max) data in ADO.NET
Describes how to work with the large-value data types.

FILESTREAM data
Describes how to work with large-value data stored in SQL Server 2008 with the FILESTREAM attribute.

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