I’ve been reasonably happy with SQL Server 2000, especially after I got it working with PHP from FreeBSD. Today though, I ran into something that I was surprised to see in SQL Server. There is a maximum row size of 8060 bytes. I was disappointed that Microsoft’s current production database system would still have this kind of limitation.
According to Chris Hedgate this is sort of fixed in SQL Server 2005. You’ll be able to have longer row sizes if they contain variable length fields which don’t exceed the 8060 byte limit. So a fixed length field greater than 8060 bytes will still be an issue. This is a partial fix at best.
I’m going to invoke the Scobleizer (Robert Scoble) and ask that he point this out the SQL Server development team. It’s 2005, if PostgreSQL can have a maximum row size of 1.6 TB and MySQL has a maximum of 65,534 bytes then surely Microsoft can throw a few million at SQL Server and get it caught up to one or both of these competing products.