Strange problem with nvarchar(max) fields and Classic ASP

Question

I\'m working on a Classic ASP (VBScript) site that\'s running on a Windows 2008 server with IIS7 and hitting a SQL Server 2008

Answer 1

If you take a look at this link, http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms130978.aspx it says to enable SQL Server Native Client to get the latest features such as varchar(max) which was was introduced in SQL2005, so I think maybe using this would work for you as well even though you're using SQL 2008.

Answer 2

I just had a similar problem (only with SQL Server 2005, not 2008):

If Not IsNull(rs("Title")) Then
    Response.Write "The title: " & rs("Title") 
End If

The Response.Write was executed, but the title itself was not displayed.

It took me quite some time until I figured out that the combination of ASP Classic and nvarchar(max) was causing the problem.
Then I found this and did what was described there...I changed my code to this:

SomeVariable = rs("Title")    
If Not IsNull(SomeVariable) Then
    Response.Write "The title: " & SomeVariable 
End If

Answer 3

Very old thread - admitted. But I had this issue and it was driving me INSANE.

I fixed this by changing my connection string like this:

objConn.Open "Driver={SQL Server}; Server=(local); Database=<what-your-database-is-called>; Uid=sa;Pwd=sa;"

to:

objConn.Open "Provider=SQLNCLI; Server=(local); Database=<what-your-database-is-called> ; Uid=sa;Pwd=sa;"

So, essentially, removing Driver={SQL Server} and adding in "Provider=SQLNCLI;", FIXED THIS.

I can now see the nvarchar(max) column displayed correctly in my Classic ASP page.

Hope this helps someone.

Answer 4

This issue remains or resurfaces with using DSN's on Server 2012 and 2016.

Using DSN send the data thru an immediate layer that appears to handle varbinary(max) fine but not varchar(max) or nvarchar(max).

It is a bit worst, because over time if you have actual results over 9K (in my case, one that was 400K), there appears to be corruption of memory/code and the server errors with a vague external component error

Answer 5

aside from the 'pull it into a variable before display'... I vaguely remember coworkers needing some hack with asp/sql/varchar(max) queries, something like it had to be the last column (or not the last column) in the query. Really sorry for the vagueness, it's been a few years since I've had to deal with asp.

Answer 6

I did cast(columName to varchar) and it worked for me.