What is the best way to store a large amount of text in a SQL server table?

Question

What is the best way to store a large amount of text in a table in SQL server?

Is varchar(max) reliable?

Answer 1

According to the text found here, varbinary(max) is the way to go. You'll be able to store approximately 2GB of data.

Answer 2

Split the text into chunks that your database can actually handle. And, put the split up text in another table. Use the id from the text_chunk table as text_chunk_id in your original table. You might want another column in your table to keep text that fits within your largest text data type.

CREATE TABLE text_chunk (
     id NUMBER,
     chunk_sequence NUMBER,
     text BIGTEXT)