Character Set Collation Question

[taylor5pak]

Hello,

I have received this question and was wondering what other DBA responses would be ... Our export application which is on SQL Server 2000 currently, on its own server is currently supporting both Western European as well as UTF-8 character sets. What would your reaction be if they were to say to you that we will only support the UTF-8 character set in the new version coming out. All comments would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you

 

[Catadmin]

My only reaction is that if SQL Server is currently accepting both in its tables and columns, then why worry if they are paring it down to one? A glance at the UTF-8 indicates that it has all the regular alphanumeric characters plus some.

The character sets themselves have little or nothing to do with SQL Server save maybe using Unicode in it to make sure that you can read all the UTF-8 characters. If none of the data this application is dealing with is stored in SQL, then the question is moot anyway.

Do you have a specific concern over this issue that relates to SQL???



Catadmin - MCDBA, MCSA
"If a person is Microsoft Certified, does that mean that Microsoft pays the bills for the funny white jackets that tie in the back???

 

[taylor5pak]

Hello Catadmin,

Thank you for the response. No specific concerns.. This question was sent to us by our vendor. I think they are just asking at a high level to evaluate what responses would be if they were to say this..

All of the data for this application is stored in SQL Server 2000. The application is completely written by the vendor. So I would only be concerned about the upgrade it self and any data conversions that it would require, but again since this decision is coming from the vendor, I would expect them to have a solution and/or migration scripts.

Any other suggestions you can think of that they should be concerned about or consider..

Thanks again
Regards
Donna