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I tried to store Arabic string in SQL 2008 database but it converted to " question mark " why ? and what should I do ?
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To store data of other language than English in SQL Server, we use Unicode compatible data types in the column such as nvarchar, nchar, ntext otherwise proper data is not stored in the database. Also while inserting data into those columns we prefix the data with “N” character.
The key difference between varchar and nvarchar is the way they are stored, varchar is stored as regular 8-bit data(1 byte per character) and nvarchar stores data at 2 bytes per character. Due to this reason, nvarchar can hold upto 4000 characters and it takes double the space as SQL varchar.
SQL Server 2019 introduces support for the widely used UTF-8 character encoding. This has been a longtime requested feature and can be set as a database-level or column-level default encoding for Unicode string data.
You need to choose an Arabic collation for your varchar/char columns or use Unicode (nchar/nvarchar)
CREATE TABLE #test ( col1 VARCHAR(100) COLLATE Latin1_General_100_CI_AI, col2 VARCHAR(100) COLLATE Arabic_CI_AI_KS_WS, col3 NVARCHAR(100) ) INSERT INTO #test VALUES(N'لا أتكلم العربية',N'لا أتكلم العربية',N'لا أتكلم العربية') Note the N before values in insert statement above. If you do not mention it, system will treat the values as Varchar, not NVarchar.
SELECT * FROM #test Returns
col1 col2 col3 ------------------------------ ------------------------------ ------------------------------ ?? ????? ??????? لا أتكلم العربية لا أتكلم العربية To see a list of Arabic collations use
SELECT name, description FROM fn_helpcollations() WHERE name LIKE 'Arabic%' If you love us? You can donate to us via Paypal or buy me a coffee so we can maintain and grow! Thank you!
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