Convert ntext to nvarchar for ORDER BY?

I need to sort by an ntext field, but it won't let me do it.

However, if I cast the field as nvarchar(100), I can use ORDER BY on that.

Is there any reason that this is a bad idea? In my testing, ordering by a converted ntext field was actually *faster* than ordering by an nvarchar (same data in the fields).

Joshntext is for huge chunks of data (up to 2 gigabytes)

if you can easily sort on the first 100 characters, i would suggest that you do so

i can't see that people are going to notice the difference in sort order beyond the 100th character if in fact two 2-gigabyte fields are identical in the first 100 characters

and why sort on 2 gigabytes if you don't have to?|||It doesn't inherently guarantee uniqueness but you might be able to live with that. You wouldn't be able make use of an index on this column.|||100 characters is plenty for my needs - I just need to sort the recordset for display to the user. Only the first 100 characters will be displayed in the list, anyway.

I'm just wondering if there's a performance penalty due to the conversion, or anything like that.

Thanks!
Josh|||ou will be sorting on a non-indexed column which will be a performance issue.|||Ok, thanks. These columns are user-customizable, so I don't think we will be using indexes on them. Are there any other issues that I need to worry about?

Josh