{"id":117,"date":"2014-05-01T12:23:00","date_gmt":"2014-05-01T11:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/debuggersspace.com\/index.php\/2014\/05\/01\/difference-between-char-varchar-and-nvarchar-in-sql-server\/"},"modified":"2014-05-01T12:23:00","modified_gmt":"2014-05-01T11:23:00","slug":"difference-between-char-varchar-and-nvarchar-in-sql-server","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/debuggersspace.com\/index.php\/2014\/05\/01\/difference-between-char-varchar-and-nvarchar-in-sql-server\/","title":{"rendered":"Difference between char varchar and nvarchar in sql server?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n \t<\/i> Read Time:<\/span>2 Minute, 29 Second <\/div>\n\n <\/div>
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\nChar DataType<\/o:p><\/span><\/span><\/u><\/b><\/div>\n
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\nChar datatype which is used to store fixed length of characters. Suppose if we declared char(50) it will allocates memory for 50 characters. Once we declare char(50) and insert only 10 characters of word then only 10 characters of memory will be used and other 40 characters of memory will be wasted.<\/o:p><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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\nvarchar DataType<\/o:p><\/span><\/span><\/u><\/b><\/div>\n
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\nVarchar means variable characters and it is used to store non-unicode characters. It will allocate the memory based on number characters inserted. Suppose if we declared varchar(50) it will allocates memory of 0 characters at the time of declaration. Once we declare varchar(50) and insert only 10 characters of word it will allocate memory for only 10 characters.<\/o:p><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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\nnvarchar DataType<\/o:p><\/span><\/span><\/u><\/b><\/div>\n
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\nnvarchar datatype same as varchar<\/b> datatype but only difference nvarchar<\/b> is used to store Unicode characters and it allows you to store multiple languages in database. nvarchar<\/b> datatype will take twice as much space to store extended set of characters as required by other languages.<\/o:p><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\n
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\nSo if we are not using other languages then it\u2019s better to use varchar<\/b> datatype instead of nvarchar<\/b><\/span><\/o:p><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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\n<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
\nNon-Unicode vs. Unicode Data Types: Comparison Chart<\/b><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

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\nThe primary difference between unicode and non-Unicode data types is the ability of Unicode to easily handle the storage of foreign language characters which also requires more storage space.<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Non-Unicode<\/b><\/td>\nUnicode<\/b><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
(char, varchar, text)<\/b><\/td>\n(nchar, nvarchar, ntext)<\/b><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Stores data in fixed or variable length<\/td>\nSame as non-Unicode<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
char<\/b>: data is padded with blanks to fill the field size. For example, if a char(10) field contains 5 characters the system will pad it with 5 blanks<\/td>\nnchar<\/b>: same as char<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
varchar<\/b>: stores actual value and does not pad with blanks<\/td>\nnvarchar<\/b>: same as varchar<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
requires 1 byte<\/b> of storage<\/td>\nrequires 2 bytes<\/b> of storage<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
char<\/b> and varchar<\/b>: can store up to 8000<\/b> characters<\/td>\nnchar<\/b> and nvarchar<\/b>: can store up to 4000<\/b> characters<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Best suited for US English<\/b>: “One problem with data types that use 1 byte to encode each character is that the data type can only represent 256 different characters. This forces multiple encoding specifications (or code pages) for different alphabets such as European alphabets, which are relatively small. It is also impossible to handle systems such as the Japanese Kanji or Korean Hangul alphabets that have thousands of characters.”1<\/sup><\/td>\nBest suited for systems that need to support at least one foreign language<\/b>: “The Unicode specification defines a single encoding scheme for most characters widely used in businesses around the world. All computers consistently translate the bit patterns in Unicode data into characters using the single Unicode specification. This ensures that the same bit pattern is always converted to the same character on all computers. Data can be freely transferred from one database or computer to another without concern that the receiving system will translate the bit patterns into characters incorrectly.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

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<\/b><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Char DataType Char datatype which is used to store fixed length of characters. Suppose if we declared char(50) it will allocates memory for 50 characters. Once we declare char(50) and insert only 10 characters of word then only 10 characters of memory will be used and other 40 characters of memory will be wasted. varchar […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[22,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-l-t","category-sql"],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"Himanshu Namdeo","author_link":"https:\/\/debuggersspace.com\/author\/admin\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Char DataType Char datatype which is used to store fixed length of characters. Suppose if we declared char(50) it will allocates memory for 50 characters. Once we declare char(50) and insert only 10 characters of word then only 10 characters of memory will be used and other 40 characters of memory will be wasted. varchar…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/debuggersspace.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/debuggersspace.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/debuggersspace.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/debuggersspace.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/debuggersspace.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/debuggersspace.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/debuggersspace.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/debuggersspace.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/debuggersspace.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}