How do I store a list of strings in a database?

14 Answers. No, there is no “better” way to store a sequence of items in a single column. Relational databases are designed specifically to store one value per row/column combination. In order to store more than one value, you must serialize your list into a single value for storage, then deserialize it upon retrieval.

How are strings stored in SQL?

SQL varchar stores variable string length whereas SQL char stores fixed string length. This means SQL Server varchar holds only the characters we assign to it and char holds the maximum column space regardless of the string it holds. So in cases where disk size is not an issue, it is recommended to use CHAR.

Which is better varchar or Nvarchar?

Nvarchar stores UNICODE data. If you have requirements to store UNICODE or multilingual data, nvarchar is the choice. Varchar stores ASCII data and should be your data type of choice for normal use. Regarding memory usage, nvarchar uses 2 bytes per character, whereas varchar uses 1.

How do I store more than 8000 characters in SQL Server?

SQL SERVER – How to store more than 8000 characters in a column

1. Step 1 : Let me create a table to demonstrate the solution.
2. Step 2 : Insert 10,000 characters in the column ([Column_varchar]).
3. Step 3 : Check the length of column ([Column_varchar]) to see if 10,000 characters are inserted or not.
4. Step 5 :

How do I store a list of IDs in SQL?

2 Answers

1. Store the IDs as CSV string ( 3,4,17 ) and use some sort of string split later.
2. Store the IDs as XML in an XML typed column (support goes down to SQL Server 2005) like 3417
3. Store the JSON you have just as the string it is into a NVARCHAR(MAX) column.

Can you store array in SQL?

SQL doesn’t explicitly support arrays as a data type within its own language, but there are many workarounds to make it possible because it’s a relational database. Relational databases like SQL work using relations and keys. If you really want to or need to store arrays, here are some ways that you can do it.

Which of the following data types is used to store string in SQL?

String Data Types

Data type	Description	Storage
varchar(max)	Variable width character string	2 bytes + number of chars
text	Variable width character string	4 bytes + number of chars
nchar	Fixed width Unicode string	Defined width x 2
nvarchar	Variable width Unicode string

Does varchar Max affect performance?

Whilst varchar(MAX) will not affect the performance much, since they are stored in the database memory space rather than a pointer to data concept as in Sql Server 2000 (TEXT/NTEXT/ IMAGE datatypes). So the process time with varchar(MAX) is proportional to the size of the data you are processing .

What does varchar 8000 do?

Varchar(8000) stores a maximum of 8000 characters. Varchar(max) stores a maximum of 2 147 483 647 characters. See Books Online, the page titled “char and varchar” for more info. VARCHAR(MAX) uses the normal datapages until the content actually fills 8k of data.

How do I make a list of values in SQL?

You can create lists of SQL Query or Fixed Data values . In the Data Model components pane, click List of Values and then click Create new List of Values. Enter a Name for the list and select a Type.