varchar versus nvarchar

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varchar versus nvarchar

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GilaMonster

Posted Thursday, December 04, 2008 10:08 AM

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declare @test VARCHAR(20)
SET @test = 'resumé'
select @test

There's a difference between extended ASCII and unicode.

Gail Shaw
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Post #613890

Mauve

Posted Thursday, December 04, 2008 10:18 AM

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GilaMonster (12/4/2008)[hr
There's a difference between extended ASCII and unicode.

True, but the support of extended (8-bit) ASCII is also governed by the collation of the database and the calling application, among other things.

Best bet is to to be global and use Unicode. If the application is .Net, it is a no-brainer as .Net is Unicode.

(PHB) I think we should build an SQL database. (Dilbert) What color do you want that database? (PHB) I think mauve has the most RAM.

Post #613902

Ninja's_RGR'us

Posted Thursday, December 04, 2008 10:23 AM

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JohnG (12/4/2008)

Note that even in America, extended ASCII is very common. Just think of all of peoples names that have accents in them. Or the word resumé. Let alone, there is this province in Canada that has French as the standard language.

So if you are designing a new system, use NCHAR and NVARCHAR. Trust me and you'll thank me later.

I'm from Quebec... and varchar is more than enough to cover all our words!!!

Post #613906

steveb.

Posted Thursday, December 04, 2008 10:33 AM

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Ninja's_RGR'us (12/4/2008)

JohnG (12/4/2008)

I'm from Quebec... and varchar is more than enough to cover all our words!!!

Varchar will handle any Latin/Romance language easily so I can't see any French words causing an issue, but you must have names of people/business that are from different aplhabets.

Post #613914

Mauve

Posted Thursday, December 04, 2008 10:34 AM

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I'll qualify my responses as follows:

If you are designing and building a system that will be used within a single language culture then by all means choose the proper database collation and use VARCHAR. If, however, your system will be used by different cultures, then you should use NVARCHAR (Unicode).

If your system is a web-application (e.g., a SaaS offering) it should be Unicode. Also note that a lot of companies are global. Those that are not, may be in the future. If not from expansion they could be as a result of a merger or acquisition (M&A).

My company has a SaaS offering that is used globally. Some of the customers are multi-lingual -- i.e., they have global offices. Consequently, the data placed into the system is from all languages and character sets.

BOL links supporting the above:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms187828(SQL.90).aspx Note the reference to (North America) Mexico, Quebec, Canada and US.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms188325(SQL.90).aspx

Edit: Added BOL links

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Post #613916

L' Eomot Inversé

Posted Friday, January 28, 2011 4:46 PM

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Carla Wilson-484785 (12/2/2008)

AND not too long ago, there was a forum post about trailing blanks in nvarchar, and how that can be a problem in comparisons, etc. unless you use RTRIM().

Belated response:
If the ANSI_PADDING option is set ON varchar has exactly the same trailing blanks issues as nvarchar; and the ability to set it OFF will be removed from SQL Server very soon (MS advice has for years been to keep it on at all times; setting it OFF creates big problems for indexed views and for table indexes involving computed columns, amongst other little problems) so those trailing blank issues should not be a factor in deciding between nvarchar and varchar - if you use varchar to avoid the trailing blanks issue your code will stop working in a new SQL Server release sometime soon.

BTW, what on earth is this topic doing in the relational theory forum? I don't see the connection. Unsure