Converting long string to binary data in transact-sql fails

Question

I want to convert a long string (json later) to binary data, to send it as a message in Service Broker. Now I have a problem with the string length, since it's cut after a few chars.

declare @astring varbinary(MAX) = CONVERT(varbinary(MAX), 'Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consetetur sadipscing elitr, sed diam nonumy eirmod tempor invidunt ut labore et dolore magna aliquyam erat, sed diam voluptua. At vero eos et accusam et justo duo dolores et ea rebum. Stet clita kasd gubergren, no sea takimata sanctus est Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consetetur sadipscing elitr, sed diam nonumy eirmod tempor invidunt ut labore et dolore magna aliquyam erat, sed diam voluptua. At vero eos et accusam et justo duo dolores et ea rebum. Stet clita kasd gubergren, no sea takimata sanctus est Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.');

When I convert this back to varchar

convert(varchar(MAX), @longerstring)

the result is 126 chars: "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consetetur sadipscing elitr, sed diam nonumy eirmod tempor invidunt ut labore et dolore magna aliq".

I tried varchar(8000) too, can't see an improvement.. what am I doing wrong? Thanks.

Answer 1

I've just run the following in SQL Server Management Studio 2008 R2 and it works as expected (592 characters):

declare @astring varbinary(MAX) = CONVERT(varbinary(MAX), 'Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consetetur sadipscing elitr, sed diam nonumy eirmod tempor invidunt ut labore et dolore magna aliquyam erat, sed diam voluptua. At vero eos et accusam et justo duo dolores et ea rebum. Stet clita kasd gubergren, no sea takimata sanctus est Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consetetur sadipscing elitr, sed diam nonumy eirmod tempor invidunt ut labore et dolore magna aliquyam erat, sed diam voluptua. At vero eos et accusam et justo duo dolores et ea rebum. Stet clita kasd gubergren, no sea takimata sanctus est Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.');

print convert(varchar(MAX), @astring)

Note that I changed @longerstring to @astring as part of this, as I do not know where @longerstring came from.