I'm new to Microsoft SQL. I'm planning to store text in Microsoft SQL server and there will be special international characters. Is there a "Data Type" specific to Unicode or I'm better encoding my text with a reference to the unicode number (i.e. \u0056)
Use Nvarchar
/Nchar
(MSDN link). There used to be an Ntext
datatype as well, but it's deprecated now in favour of Nvarchar
.
The columns take up twice as much space over the non-unicode counterparts (char
and varchar
).
Then when "manually" inserting into them, use N
to indicate it's unicode text:
INSERT INTO MyTable(SomeNvarcharColumn)
VALUES (N'français')