Reading Unicode strings from SQL Server

Question

I know strings need to be prefixed with N' in SQL Server (2012) INSERT statements to store them as UNICODE but do they have to be retrieved (SELECT statement) in a certain way as well so they are in UNICODE?

I am able to store international strings correctly with N notation but when I run SELECT query to fetch the records back, it comes as question marks. My query is very simple.

SELECT COLUMN1, COLUMN2 FROM TABLE1

I am looking at other possible reasons that may have caused this issue but at least I want to eliminate the SQL statement above. Should it read COLUMN1 and COLUMN2 columns correctly when they both store UNICODE strings using N notation? Do I have to do anything to the statement to tell it they are UNICODE?

it comes as question marks SQL Server Management Studio or your application? Check if it works with SSMS, if yes, then probably your app cannot read data correctly(driver,encoding,...) — Lukasz Szozda
– Lukasz Szozda, Commented May 3, 2016 at 17:08

Edmond Quinton · Accepted Answer · 2016-05-03 17:44:46Z

1

Within management studio you should not need to do anything special to display the correct values. Make sure that the columns in your table is defined as Unicode strings NVARCHAR instead of ANSI strings VARCHAR.

The following example demonstrates the concept:

    CREATE TABLE UnicodeExample
    (
         MyUnicodeColumn NVARCHAR(100)
        ,MYANSIColumn VARCHAR(100)
    )

    INSERT INTO UnicodeExample
    (
         MyUnicodeColumn
        ,MYANSIColumn
    )
    VALUES
    (
        N'איש'
        ,N'איש'
    )

    SELECT *
    FROM    UnicodeExample

    DROP TABLE UnicodeExample

In the above example the column MyUnicodeColumn is defined as an NVARCHAR(100) and MYANSIColumn is defined as a VARCHAR(100). The query will correctly return the result for MyUnicodeColumn but will return ??? for MYANSIColum.

answered May 3, 2016 at 17:44

Edmond Quinton

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