Problems character sets / special characters dot.Net <-> mssql-server

[Klaus Herzberg]

Hi,
I come from the "dark side" php/mysql and there often problems with
character sets (utf-8, latin...) and storing data in datebase.

Exists in the world of dot.net and ms-sql-server similiar problems?

To precise: I have to store xml-data in database. Maybe its better to
encode (like base64) the strings?

Perhaps there are some links to read?

Thanks.

klaus.

[Plamen Ratchev]

Re: Problems character sets / special characters dot.Net &lt;-&gt; mssql-server

You do not need to do any encoding. If you are using SQL Server 2000 then
you can use the NVARCHAR data type (which supports Unicode characters
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode) to store the XML.

SQL Server 2005 added native support for XML data type, which will makes it
the natural choice for storing XML:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms345117.aspx

http://www.code-magazine.com/Article.aspx?quickid=0605081

HTH,

Plamen Ratchev

http://www.SQLStudio.com

[Erland Sommarskog]

Re: Problems character sets / special characters dot.Net &lt;-&gt; mssql-server

Klaus Herzberg (klausherzberg@ gmail.com) writes:

I come from the "dark side" php/mysql and there often problems with
character sets (utf-8, latin...) and storing data in datebase.
>
Exists in the world of dot.net and ms-sql-server similiar problems?

Character conversion is always a problem, if you don't do it right. :-)

To precise: I have to store xml-data in database. Maybe its better to
encode (like base64) the strings?

No, that is a not a good idea. SQL Server supports Unicode, and there is
also a native xml type (in SQL 2005). What you should be aware of that
SQL Server does not support UTF-8, but always store Unicode data in
UTF-16.

For character data you should use nchar/nvarchar which is Unicode
and not char/varchar which is the local 8-bit set.

--
Erland Sommarskog, SQL Server MVP, esquel@sommarsk og.se

Books Online for SQL Server 2005 at

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sql/2005/downloads/books.mspx

Books Online for SQL Server 2000 at

http://www.microsoft.com/sql/prodinfo/previousversions/books.mspx

[Klaus Herzberg]

Re: Problems character sets / special characters dot.Net &lt;-&gt; mssql-server

thank you for help.