asked on Changing from varchar to nvarchar
We are using MS SQL 2012R2. One of our tables has a field which is varchar(MAX), we are changing it to nvarchar(MAX) in order to allow non-latin characters to be entered.
We already tested and worked fine. My question is: For all the entries we already have in that varchar field, will they be affected in ANY way if we change the field to nvarchar?
We already tested and worked fine. My question is: For all the entries we already have in that varchar field, will they be affected in ANY way if we change the field to nvarchar?
Microsoft SQL ServerWeb DevelopmentASPSQL
Last Comment
Jim Horn
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That is great news! Thank you.
As Brian says, No, but you'll take a minor performance hit.
- nvarchar's take 2 bytes per character, so the table size on disk will increase, which could be a big deal if there are 1000's of characters (and page splits too) in the values and a bajillion rows.
- (I've been told, haven't fully tested to verify this statement) When queries execute they need to pre-store the expected return set size, and nvarchar's will make that bigger, which could be a big hit if your return set is huge.