Please help - unusual warning when creating a column

Hi everyone,
This is weird. I create a new column programatically using the "ALTER
TABLE" command (you know the one) inside SQL Query Analyzer. The
column is indeed created but the following warning is thrown:
WARNING: The table 'OrderRecords' has been created but its maximum row
size (15,420) exceeds the maximum number of bytes per row (8060).
INSERT or UPDATE of a row in this table will fail if the resulting row
length exceeds 8060 bytes
I then checked a likely column. I ran a wee query to find the maximum
row and it returned a row of maximum length of 2,647 characters.
Now I'm totally confused. Does anyone know why such a warning is being
thrown? Any suggestions/comments/ideas/queries to run - much
appreciated.
Puzzled,
Al.The whole size of the rows exceeds 8060 bytes, thats the most possible
bytes SQl Server can handle per row, so this is just a warning (not an
error), that it might could be if you exceed the magic border, data
will be truncated.
If you are aware of that and you=B4ll be happy with it or you have
another way to handle this, this is fine, but you should keep that in
mind. For the best you should redesign your table by putting some
values in another table or thinking of changing the actual types of the
columns, if that is possible.
HTH, Jens Suessmeyer.|||This means that the sum of all you columns can in theory be 15,420
bytes
If someone inserts data and it exceeds 8060 bytes, then the statement
will fail
look at all the field sizes in this table and make sure they don't
exceed 8060 bytes
http://sqlservercode.blogspot.com/|||> This is weird. I create a new column programatically using the "ALTER
> TABLE" command (you know the one) inside SQL Query Analyzer. The
> column is indeed created but the following warning is thrown:
> WARNING: The table 'OrderRecords' has been created but its maximum row
> size (15,420) exceeds the maximum number of bytes per row (8060).
> INSERT or UPDATE of a row in this table will fail if the resulting row
> length exceeds 8060 bytes
It is a WARNING about the maximum possible rowsize based on the columns
defined for the table. Just guessing, but it is likely that you have a
couple (or a bunch) of large varchar columns in the table that could, if
completely filled with data, exceed the maximum possible rowsize supported
by sql server.|||Thanks everyone - that's fine. I can live with that. Thanks for all
your feedback.
Al.
The happy one.