Data truncation is a process of shortening data or a data stream that is too long to be stored in a given location. It is often used in reference to data types or variables, such as numbers and floating-point strings. Truncating data values means removing values from a dataset that are below or above a certain value. This can lead to silent truncation, which occurs when string data is inserted into a column that has a shorter character limit than the data being inserted.
This results in an SQL truncation error. To avoid this, developers and database administrators can add a dummy row with data longer than 255 characters in the column that is causing the error. Censoring data means collecting only partial information about data values, while truncating data means removing data values from a dataset altogether. To display the SQL truncation error message, administrators can use the trace flag.
