Is there any way to DISTINCT or group by a text (or ntext) in SQL Server 2005?

Question

In a table, I have a column called MEMO_TEXT that is a text data type. When I try creating a view and use a GROUP BY, I get the following error:

SQL S

Answer 1

Can you just change the data type of the column to nvarchar(max)?

Consider putting in another column that takes the first 40 characters or so of your memo field, and group on that. Grouping on a memo field is going to be really slow if you have a lot of text in there.

UPDATE myTable SET myNewField = LEFT(myOldField, 40);