Data storage flexibility is improved in SQL Server 7.0 with the expansion of maximum limits for char, varchar, binary, and varbinary data types from 255 bytes to 8,000 bytes. It is no longer necessary to use text and image data types for anything but extremely large data values. The Transact-SQL string functions also support the large char and varchar data types, and the SUBSTRING function can be used to process text and image columns.
Additionally, the handling of nulls and empty strings has been improved. And a new uniqueidentifier data type is provided for storing a globally unique identifier (GUID).