I am trying to generate json data through sql queries. I used "For Json Auto" to generate json.
One of the table contains html data with html tags. At the time of retrieving it in json it gives me error like :
TITLE: Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio
Unable to show XML. The following error happened:
Name cannot begin with the '\' character, hexadecimal value 0x5C. Line 1, position 426.
One solution is to increase the number of characters retrieved from the server for XML data. To change this setting, on the Tools menu, click Options.
BUTTONS:
OK
I have already set the XML character limit to unlimited. But still it gives me same error. Any help on this would be thankful.
The only way I was able to get around this was to switch to Results as Text and increase the number of characters per line greatly.
I have observed that Burmese language is shown as "boxes" are record level in SQL server 2012. Both the fields shown in the screenshot are nvarchar type with more than the required length.Is this expected ? If so why.
If you are storing it in nvarchar then it is OK,
You can test it by copy and paste one of the row data into Google Translate where Burma language is selected as source, if you see the text in Burma language characters, then it is OK
It is related with the editor
You have to install correct Burmese font Zawgyi or Myanmar-1.
How do you view ALL text from an NTEXT or NVARCHAR(max) in SQL Server Management Studio? By default, it only seems to return the first few hundred characters (255?) but sometimes I just want a quick way of viewing the whole field, without having to write a program to do it. Even SSMS 2012 still has this problem :(
I was able to get the full text (99,208 chars) out of a NVARCHAR(MAX) column by selecting (Results To Grid) just that column and then right-clicking on it and then saving the result as a CSV file. To view the result open the CSV file with a text editor (NOT Excel). Funny enough, when I tried to run the same query, but having Results to File enabled, the output was truncated using the Results to Text limit.
The work-around that #MartinSmith described as a comment to the (currently) accepted answer didn't work for me (got an error when trying to view the full XML result complaining about "The '[' character, hexadecimal value 0x5B, cannot be included in a name").
Quick trick-
SELECT CAST('<A><![CDATA[' + CAST(LogInfo as nvarchar(max)) + ']]></A>' AS xml)
FROM Logs
WHERE IDLog = 904862629
In newer versions of SSMS it can be configured in the (Query/Query Options/Results/Grid/Maximum Characters Retrieved) menu:
Old versions of SSMS
Options (Query Results/SQL Server/Results to Grid Page)
To change the options for the current queries, click Query Options on the Query menu, or right-click in the SQL Server Query window and select Query Options.
...
Maximum Characters Retrieved
Enter a number from 1 through 65535 to specify the maximum number of characters that will be displayed in each cell.
Maximum is, as you see, 64k. The default is much smaller.
BTW Results to Text has even more drastic limitation:
Maximum number of characters displayed in each column
This value defaults to 256. Increase this value to display larger result sets without truncation. The maximum value is 8,192.
I have written an add-in for SSMS and this problem is fixed there. You can use one of 2 ways:
you can use "Copy current cell 1:1" to copy original cell data to clipboard:
http://www.ssmsboost.com/Features/ssms-add-in-copy-results-grid-cell-contents-line-with-breaks
Or, alternatively, you can open cell contents in external text editor (notepad++ or notepad) using "Cell visualizers" feature: http://www.ssmsboost.com/Features/ssms-add-in-results-grid-visualizers
(feature allows to open contents of field in any external application, so if you know that it is text - you use text editor to open it. If contents is binary data with picture - you select view as picture. Sample below shows opening a picture):
Return data as XML
SELECT CONVERT(XML, [Data]) AS [Value]
FROM [dbo].[FormData]
WHERE [UID] LIKE '{my-uid}'
Make sure you set a reasonable limit in the SSMS options window, depending on the result you're expecting.
This will work if the text you're returning doesn't contain unencoded characters like & instead of & that will cause the XML conversion to fail.
Returning data using PowerShell
For this you will need the PowerShell SQL Server module installed on the machine on which you'll be running the command.
If you're all set up, configure and run the following script:
Invoke-Sqlcmd -Query "SELECT [Data] FROM [dbo].[FormData] WHERE [UID] LIKE '{my-uid}'" -ServerInstance "database-server-name" -Database "database-name" -Username "user" -Password "password" -MaxCharLength 10000000 | Out-File -filePath "C:\db_data.txt"
Make sure you set the -MaxCharLength parameter to a value that suits your needs.
I was successful with this method today. It's similar to the other answers in that it also converts the contents to XML, just using a different method. As I didn't see FOR XML PATH mentioned amongst the answers, I thought I'd add it for completeness:
SELECT [COL_NVARCHAR_MAX]
FROM [SOME_TABLE]
FOR XML PATH(''), ROOT('ROOT')
This will deliver a valid XML containing the contents of all rows, nested in an outer <ROOT></ROOT> element. The contents of the individual rows will each be contained within an element that, for this example, is called <COL_NVARCHAR_MAX>. The name of that can be changed using an alias via AS.
Special characters like &, < or > or similar will be converted to their respective entities. So you may have to convert <, > and & back to their original character, depending on what you need to do with the result.
EDIT
I just realized that CDATA can be specified using FOR XML too. I find it a bit cumbersome though. This would do it:
SELECT 1 as tag, 0 as parent, [COL_NVARCHAR_MAX] as [COL_NVARCHAR_MAX!1!!CDATA]
FROM [SOME_TABLE]
FOR XML EXPLICIT, ROOT('ROOT')
PowerShell Alternative
This is an old post and I read through the answers. Still, I found it a bit too painful to output multi-line large text fields unaltered from SSMS. I ended up writing a small C# program for my needs, but got to thinking it could probably be done using the command line. Turns out, it is fairly easy to do so with PowerShell.
Start by installing the SqlServer module from an administrative PowerShell.
Install-Module -Name SqlServer
Use Invoke-Sqlcmd to run your query:
$Rows = Invoke-Sqlcmd -Query "select BigColumn from SomeTable where Id = 123" `
-MaxCharLength 2147483647 -ConnectionString $ConnectionString
This will return an array of rows that you can output to the console as follows:
$Rows[0].BigColumn
Or output to a file as follows:
$Rows[0].BigColumn | Out-File -FilePath .\output.txt -Encoding UTF8
The result is a beautiful un-truncated text written to a file for viewing/editing. I am sure there is a similar command to save back the text to SQL Server, although that seems like a different question.
EDIT: It turns out that there was an answer by #dvlsc that described this approach as a secondary solution. I think because it was listed as a secondary answer, is the reason I missed it in the first place. I am going to leave my answer which focuses on the PowerShell approach, but wanted to at least give credit where it was due.
If you only have to view it, I've used this:
print cast(dbo.f_functiondeliveringbigformattedtext(seed) as text)
The end result is that I get line feeds and all the content in the messages window of SMSS.
Of course, it only allows for a single cell - if you want to do a single cell from a number of rows, you could do this:
declare #T varchar(max)=''
select #T=#T
+ isnull(dbo.f_functiondeliveringbigformattedtext(x.a),'NOTHINGFOUND!')
+ replicate(char(13),4)
from x -- table containing multiple rows and a value in column a
print #T
I use this to validate JSON strings generated by SQL code. Too hard to read otherwise!
Use visual studio code with sql server plugin. Super usefull for jsons
Alternative 1: Right Click to copy cell and Paste into Text Editor (hopefully with utf-8 support)
Alternative 2: Right click and export to CSV File
Alternative 3: Use SUBSTRING function to visualize parts of the column. Example:
SELECT SUBSTRING(fileXml,2200,200) FROM mytable WHERE id=123456
The easiest way to quickly view large varchar/text column:
declare #t varchar(max)
select #t = long_column from table
print #t
I am using mail merge to input data from an excel sheet. Everthing works great and I can access my variables using «MyMergefield»
Now I need for each letter generated to look into another excel file and do a query that will take the «MyMergefield» as a query filter SELECT FROM x WHERE field1 = «MyMergefield»
The way I am proceeding is "inserting a quick part" => "Field" in my word document.
In the quickpart dialog, I choose "DataBase", then I choose my excel file.
once the data source is chosen, There an option to change the request parameters, I click on it and I get the filter configuration popup where I can choose the field (from the excel sheet), the operator ("equals" in this case). Then there's the compare with field. In my case its not as simple as comparing to as string. Its comparing to a mail merge field.
I tried the following syntax:
«Myfield»
MERGEFIELD Myfield
MERGEFIELD "Myfield"
{MergeField Myfield}
{ MERGEFIELD Myfield}
None worked, it complained that it did not find any match so it did not insert the database (Of course it will not find any match to the syntax if I don't run mail merge)
I did look directly in the openxml file of an existing example (because I can't edit existing quickpart - Correct me if Im wrong) and the database query looked like:
FROM `Candidates$` WHERE ((`column` = '</w:instrText>
...
<w:instrText xml:space="preserve"> MERGEFIELD Myfield</w:instrText>
</w:r>
Any ideas? Thank you!
I'm pulling data from a SQL Server 2008 R2 database and one of the fields is a memo field.
When the data is displayed it comes out in the format DATE/USER/then the message. There is a line break and this repeats. For example:
30/10/2013 11:34 TRACEY : order Created
30/10/2013 11:38 AUTO : order Authorised
30/10/2013 11:40 TRACEY : order Issued
30/10/2013 11:41 TRACEY : order processed
I don't have an control in changing SQL database tables/fields.
I want to be able to format this ugly block of text but really struggling to find a solution - for display in SSRS report. Is there any way I can add a space between each line? Or strip out certain words or complete lines based on some specific parameter?
I just don;t seem to be enable control formatting of memo fields. Any help appreciated.
You can write your own function (in the report' declaration) which will perform the formatting, but this is not the simple task. After this you can call this function and receive a formatted text.
Samples of this you can find in the following articles:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms156028.aspx
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms155798%28v=sql.100%29.aspx