varchar and nvarchar issue

[Vani Kancherlapalli]

Hi

The maximum length of a nvarchar could be 4000 characters while that of
varchar could be 8000.

We are trying to use unicode which would require that the datatype for
one our fields be converted from varchar to nvarchar. But looks like
this would result in loss of existing data.

Is there a way to do this without loss of data?

Many thanks.
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[Simon Hayes]

"Vani Kancherlapalli" <vk*************@linkage-inc.com> wrote in message
news:3f*********************@news.frii.net...

Hi

The maximum length of a nvarchar could be 4000 characters while that of
varchar could be 8000.

We are trying to use unicode which would require that the datatype for
one our fields be converted from varchar to nvarchar. But looks like
this would result in loss of existing data.

Is there a way to do this without loss of data?

Many thanks.
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Don't just participate in USENET...get rewarded for it!

If you need to have more than 4000 Unicode characters in a column, then you
can either use ntext, which goes up to 1GB, or split the text into multiple
rows in a dedicated table. Since nvarchar(4000) is 8000 bytes, and the
maximum row length is 8060 bytes, there would be no way to get the data into
a single row without using ntext. If you do use ntext, check the Books
Online details on text data - there are some special considerations.

Simon

[Robin Tucker]

Could use an Image field or ntext field to store the data - but will get
performance hit from doing so.

"Vani Kancherlapalli" <vk*************@linkage-inc.com> wrote in message
news:3f*********************@news.frii.net...

Hi

The maximum length of a nvarchar could be 4000 characters while that of
varchar could be 8000.

We are trying to use unicode which would require that the datatype for
one our fields be converted from varchar to nvarchar. But looks like
this would result in loss of existing data.

Is there a way to do this without loss of data?

Many thanks.
*** Sent via Developersdex http://www.developersdex.com ***
Don't just participate in USENET...get rewarded for it!