>If you know the max size stored than use regular varchar (nvarchar for Unicode), otherwise varchar/nvarchar(MAX).

This number of parentheses in that field definition is always confusing. How one is suppose to know which number to put in there? Or, is everyone keeping the default?

As for nVarChar(MAX), yes, this is something else. I had to switch to that field on the Universal Thread in order to support multilanguage content in the full text index. The result was a triple size database. :)