SQL Server 2005 allows rows to include variable length columns which do not actually fit in the maximum row size of 8060 bytes. I previously posted about row-overflow columns, and discussed the maximum number of such columns that you could have in a single table. You can read that post here. Just recently I received another question that ...

You may be well aware that if you alter the length of a column to a larger value, that SQL Server doesn’t go through all the rows at the time you issue the ALTER. The ALTER is a metadata only change, and the actual movement of data doesn’t happen until a row is updated. However, SQL Server does not reuse the original bytes in the row when a ...