Find the length of the longest text in a column

If you have a requirement to find out the longest text in a varchar, nvarchar or a text column, then here's how to do so:

 

USE PUBS

SELECT MAX(DATALENGTH(title)) as TextLength FROM titles

In order to print the longest text in a descending order of the length of text, here's how to do so:

 

USE PUBS

SELECT title, DATALENGTH(title) as TextLength FROM titles

group by title

order by TextLength desc

About The Author

Suprotim Agarwal, MCSD, MCAD, MCDBA, MCSE, is the founder of DotNetCurry, DNC Magazine for Developers, SQLServerCurry and DevCurry. He has also authored a couple of books 51 Recipes using jQuery with ASP.NET Controls and a new one recently at The Absolutely Awesome jQuery CookBook.

Suprotim has received the prestigous Microsoft MVP award for nine times in a row now. In a professional capacity, he is the CEO of A2Z Knowledge Visuals Pvt Ltd, a digital group that represents premium web sites and digital publications comprising of Professional web, windows, mobile and cloud developers, technical managers, and architects.

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