Foreign Languages and datatype conversion

[sbalun]

First, a little background info. I'm using a survey software package that stores all of the collected data in a SQL Server DB. Text fields are stored as datatypes "text" and "varchar" depending on how many characters I want to allow for a particular question. We are in the process of developing a survey that will be fielded to Japanese respondents. I've done some research on the Internet and it seems that in order to store Japanese characters in SQL I need to have my text fields set to datatypes "nText" and "nVarchar".

Since my survey DB currently stores text fields as "text" and "varchar" I need to change the datatypes on those fields.

I've done some tests on a dummy DB and changing the datatypes from text and varchar to nText and nVarchar didn't appear to have any detrimental effects on data already residing in the DB but I'm very nervous about doing this conversion on my LIVE SQL DB.

What effect will changing the datatype have on any data I currently have in those fields?

Thank you for your help.

 

[JayKusch]

I do not beleive you will run into any issues. In fact, nVarChar and nText are recommended by SQL Server. SQL Server nvarchar columns contain values from the Unicode standard, not a particular national character set. SQL Server ntext columns are limited to 2GB.


Thanks

J. Kusch