SQL Server Data Types - NCHAR

Versions: SQL Server 2008, 2005, 2000, 7.0 and 6.5

SQL Server - NCHAR
Syntax	NCHAR[(n)]
Data	Fixed-length character data in Unicode (UCS-2) character set
Parameters	n is the maximum number of characters, optional
Range	1 ⇐ n ⇐ 4000
Default	n is 1
Padding	Right-padded with spaces to n (ANSI_PADDING option does not apply to NCHAR)
Storage Size	n*2 bytes
Synonyms	NATIONAL CHAR, NATIONAL CHARACTER
Standards	ANSI SQL

SQL Server NCHAR - Equivalents in Other Databases

Database	Data Type and Conversion
Oracle	NCHAR(n), 1 ⇐ n ⇐ 2000/charsize, Unicode - UTF-8 or UTF-16
IBM DB2	GRAPHIC(n), 1 ⇐ n ⇐ 127, double-byte
MySQL	NCHAR(n), 0 ⇐ n ⇐ 255, Unicode - UTF-8 and TEXT or VARCHAR(n), 1 ⇐ n ⇐ 65535/charsize
PostgreSQL	CHAR(n), 1 ⇐ n ⇐ 1G
Sybase ASE	NCHAR(n), 1 ⇐ n ⇐ pagesize (2K, 4K, 8K or 16K); UNICHAR(n), 1 ⇐ n ⇐ pagesize, Unicode
Sybase ASA	NCHAR(n), 1 ⇐ n ⇐ 8191, Unicode - UTF-8
Informix	NCHAR(n), 1 ⇐ n ⇐ 32767, database character set
Teradata	CHAR(n), 1 ⇐ n ⇐ 64000/charsize
HP Neoview	NCHAR(n), 1 ⇐ n ⇐ (32708 - size of other columns), Unicode - UCS-2 or ISO88591 (Latin1)
Interbase/Firebird	NCHAR(n), 1 ⇐ n ⇐ 32767, single-byte ISO8859_1 (Latin 1); CHAR(n), 1 ⇐ n ⇐ 32767, with CHARACTER SET UTF-8
Ingres	NCHAR(n), 1 ⇐ n ⇐ 16000, Unicode - UTF-8

Related Data Types in SQL Server

Data Types
Fixed-length Character Data	CHAR(n)
Variable-length Character Data	VARCHAR(n)	NVARCHAR(n)
Character Large Objects	TEXT	NTEXT

All Data Types

Oracle

SQL Server

IBM DB2

MySQL

PostgreSQL

Sybase ASE

Sybase ASA

Informix DS

Teradata

HP Neoview

Interbase/Firebird

Ingres