unicode db

• newbieuser

  SSCrazy Eights

  Points: 9423

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  August 18, 2016 at 10:29 am

  #320769

  Hi friends,

  On our oracle database we have AL32UTF8 character set to support Unicode.. For SQL Server, how can we find out if the database is Unicode or non unicode?

  I just read a few documents on the forum and Google, appears that SQL server supports both ANSI and unicode character set on the same database(varchar vs nvarchar) and there is no specific database level setting for this.. Please let me know if this is correct..

  Thanks a lot for your help

• jim.donovan

  SSC Rookie

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  August 18, 2016 at 10:55 am

  #1896213

  yeah, if you have NVARCHAR instead of VARCHAR, you have UNICODE.

  read: http://ardalis.com/detect-unicode-usage-in-sql-column

  so... it's a matter of if you need unicode character support, you need NVARCHAR -- but, if you don't need it... you save space.

  Jim D.