Does varchar(max) = varchar?

Question

I noticed that I can write

SELECT CAST(Min(mynumber) AS VARCHAR(Max))+'mystring' AS X

as

SELECT CAST(Min(mynumber) AS VARCHAR)+'mystring' X

Will I regret leaving out the (Max) parameter?

Answer 1

You'll regret it in the (unlikely) situation that MAX(mynumber) has more than 30 characters:

When n is not specified when using the CAST and CONVERT functions, the default length is 30.

Answer 2

VARCHAR(MAX) should be used for Large Objects.It uses the normal datapages until the content actually fills 8k of data. When overflow happens, data is stored as old TEXT, IMAGE and a pointer is replacing the old content. Varchar is for Variable-length, non-Unicode character data. n can be a value from 1 through 8,000. Max indicates that the maximum storage size is 2^31-1 bytes. Hope it helps.