Why are my accented characters breaking in SQL Server 2005?

Question

When I update my database with this command:

UPDATE myTable SET Name = 'Hermann Dönnhoff' WHERE ID = 123;

SQL Server actually puts 'Hermann Do¨nnhoff' in the field instead. Instead of faithfully inserting the o-umlaut (char(246)), I'm getting two characters ( char(111) + char (168) ). This happens for all characters that have accent marks, not just umlauts. Has anybody seen this?

Thank you.

Answer 1

You need to use the nchar, nvarchar, or ntext datatypes for Unicode data.

The issue is that your code page does not directly support those characters.

Read up on collations for more information:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa214408%28SQL.80%29.aspx

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa174903%28SQL.80%29.aspx