Everest Database contains deprecated 'Text' columns

Overview

This article provides important information regarding the use of 'Text' columns in some Everest tables and provides a workaround when data from these tables is causing integration issues with 3rd party applications.

Information

Everest Database columns, especially memos and long strings, are still using 'text' as data type which will be deprecated in future SQL Server releases based on this article from Microsoft Deprecated Database Engine Features in SQL Server 2016.

For reference, the complete list of affected tables and columns is provided in EV2258001 - Text columns.xlsx.

It should be noted that according to the Microsoft article referenced above, the text data type will be deprecated in future SQL Server versions to be replaced with varchar(max), nvarchar(max), and varbinary(max) data types.

The text data type is however still supported on MS SQL Server 2016 which is the certified version with which to install Everest 8.

Changing the Everest database to take into account this deprecation is considered a feature request as it would mean extending the list of supported SQL Server versions.

For integration scenarios where the external applications do not support the text data type, customers can consider a workaround for read-only data flows by creating a View that will cast the affected column to a varchar(max).

Example: Using this query to cast the WEBDESC column from the CATEGORY table to varchar(max)

create view vCategory as
select active, category, cast(WEBDESC as varchar(max)) webdesc from Category

The external applications that do not support the text data type can then read from the created vCategory view to obtain the casted data without data type errors.

Back to top