Question

I have SQL Server on hosting, clients are mobile applications.

I have logic that user creates data and store it on server. Some of the data is text. However user can enter english, hebrew or any other languages his client supports.

Which Collation I need to specify to the tables to support all languages?

Regards
Yoav

Answer 1

you need to store it as nvarchar and make sure to prefix the text with N

example

declare @n nchar(1)
set @n = N'文' 

select @n
GO

declare @n nchar(1)
set @n = '文' 

select @n

output

----
文

(1 row(s) affected)


----
?

(1 row(s) affected)

The N before the string value tells SQL Server to treat it as unicode, notice that you get a question mark back when you don’t use N?

In terms of searching, take a look at Performance Impacts of Unicode, Equals vs LIKE, and Partially Filled Fixed Width