Search code examples
pythonunicodeutf-16pyodbc

pyODBC and Unicode

I'm working with pyODBC communicate with a MS SQL 2005 Express server. The table to which i'm trying to save the data consists of nvarchar columns.

query = u"INSERT INTO tblPersons (name, birthday, gender) VALUES('"
query  = query  + name + u"', '"
query  = query  + birthday + u"', '"
query  = query  + gender + u"')"
cur.execute(query)

The variables name, birthrday and gende are read from an Excel file and they are Unicode strings. When I execute the query and either look at the table with SQL Server Management Studio or execute a query that fetches the data that was just inserted, all the data that was written in a non-English languages turn into question marks. The data that was written in English is preserved and appears in the table in the correct way. I tried adding CHARSET=UTF16 to my connection string, but had no luck with that. I can use UTF-8 which works fine but as a working convention, I need all the data saved in my DB to be UTF16.

Thanks!

Solution

  • I'm so stupid.. The problem was with the server (had to change my collation to the language I needed)

    Thanks!