Hi Roger,
That's a very good question. I'm not sure how to find out as I don't see Type(Java) in either the table's Columns tab nor by expanding the table to see the columns and looking at its properties. I can't even see an indication of it in the debug window.
However, the situation is easily replicated by creating the following database on SQL Server 2008:
create database tstdb
go
use tstdb
go
create table foo (
id int
, smalltxt varchar(255)
, bigtxt varchar(max)
)
Then simply go to the data tab for the foo table and try to insert a row. You can edit the smalltxt column inline but typing text into the bigtxt column results in nothing being entered. There is no feedback to say why.
Double-clicking the smalltxt column results in an inline cursor showing in that cell, allowing editing. Double-clicking the bigtxt column results in the cell editor being opened instead.
I attach the column details of the smalltxt and bigtxt columns for comparison. The most likely culprit to me is that the smalltxt column has a SQL_DATA_TYPE of 12 and the bigtxt column has a SQL_DATA_TYPE of -1. The COLUMN_SIZE of bigtxt is 2147483647, which might also be a problem.
I presume DBVisualizer is opening the cell editor either if the data type isn't in a list of known char types or if the column size exceeds a certain value. I think VARCHAR(MAX) fields should be an exception here as they can hold very large chunks of text but that doesn't mean they actually will do when edited.
