Using variable to specify 'size' when declaring a VARBINARY

Question

In SQL Server (2008 R2), instead of doing this:

DECLARE @testVar VARBINARY(64);

I would like to do this:

DECLARE @varSize I         


        

Answer 1

For a variable, why don't you just use MAX?

DECLARE @testVar VARBINARY(MAX);

This isn't the 70s anymore. Your system can handle it. In fact if what you want to do were possible, I suspect you'd waste more resources doing that than you would just declaring the variable as MAX in the first place.