Where I work, we are currently using SQL Server 2005 and maybe in few weeks 2008. I had an issue when I wanted to have a distinct select while using text field so I did my little research.

I found out that “Text” column are depreciated and we should use “nVarchar(max)” instead. The varchar using the “max” can use up to 2gb in memory, which means that we have no reason of not using it. With a varchar, we can do all the string manipulation, distinct and etc.