• For unicode you need to divide by 2, as each unicode character takes 2 bytes. That's why a nvarchar(25) takes a max of 50 bytes (as the section you quoted says, the max length is the max number of bytes, not maximum number of characters). For non-unicode strings and all other data types, the max length doesn't need to be divided by anything.

    Gail Shaw
    Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server, MVP, M.Sc (Comp Sci)
    SQL In The Wild: Discussions on DB performance with occasional diversions into recoverability

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