nvarchar UTF ?

Question

nvarchar UTF ?

techresearch7777777 1,981

Hello, please correct me if I'm wrong or missing something...believe nvarchar is UTF-16 but is the output always utf-8 ? Thanks in advance.

LiHongMSFT-4306 31,571 Reputation points

2024-01-30T07:58:27.4966667+00:00

Hi @techresearch7777777 Do you have further question on this issue, could we offer more support? If any answer helps on your issue, you could mark it as answer so other user with similar problem could see this easier. :)

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LiHongMSFT-4306 31,571 Reputation points

2024-01-30T07:58:27.4966667+00:00

Hi @techresearch7777777 Do you have further question on this issue, could we offer more support? If any answer helps on your issue, you could mark it as answer so other user with similar problem could see this easier. :)

Answer 1

Hey techresearch7777777

Thanks for posting the question in QandA platform,

Nope, your understanding is not right. lemme clarify here, so nvarchar in SQL Server is indeed a Unicode character data type, but it uses the UTF-16 encoding, not UTF-8.

by default. The output remains UTF-16 for nvarchar in SQL Server.

If you are looking for a need to use UTF-8 action, SQL Server 2019 introduced nvarchar(max) for that purpose.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/search/?terms=navchar%20sql&category=Documentation

If this helps kindly accept the answer thanks much.

Answer 2

Olaf Helper 47,441

nvarchar is UTF-16 but is the output always utf-8 ?

It's neither nor; it's always Unicode, see https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/t-sql/functions/unicode-transact-sql https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode

Erland Sommarskog 121.8K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator

2024-01-29T21:40:02.1333333+00:00

That's an inaccurate answer. Unicode is the character set. UTF-8 and UTF-16 are different ways to encode Unicode.

As for the question, nvarchar is stored as UTF-16. How it is output depends on how the output is produced. (And since SQL Server cannot write anywhere on its own, how that output happens depends on the application.)

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nvarchar UTF ?

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