What is the Difference Between varchar and nvarchar? with Proper Definition and Brief Explanation
The main difference between varchar and nvarchar is that varchar is a variable-length non-Unicode data type, while nvarchar is a variable-length Unicode data type.
A database is a collection of data, and DBMS is software that helps to manage databases efficiently. DBMS like MSSQL are based on the relational model. They store data in tables, and these tables are connected to each other. Each table stores a specific set of values. Each row represents a record, while the columns represent attributes. When storing values in the table, each column must have data of a specific type. In other words, each column has a data type. Varchar and nvarchar are two of these data types.
Key areas covered
1. What is varchar
– Definition, Functionality
2. What is nvarchar
– Definition, Functionality
3. What is the difference between varchar and nvarchar
– Comparison of key differences
Key terms
Data type, nvarchar, Unicode, varchar
What is varchar
Structured Query Language (SQL) is the language that helps to retrieve and manage data in DBMS. SQL data types define the type of attributes on tables. Therefore, each column in the DBMS has a specific data type. Describes the type of data that you can store. The programmer can use these data types to create tables.
In short, varchar is a data type that describes a character data set of indeterminate length. A column of data type varchar can contain letters and numbers. You can keep the data up to a certain limit. MSSQL can contain a maximum of 8000 characters. If the programmer uses varchar (max), it can store a maximum length of 2E + 31 characters.
What is nvarchar
In contrast, nvarchar is a data type that stores variable-length Unicode characters. Unicode is an encoding standard that represents letters in languages such as English, Greek, Arabic, and various symbols as mathematical symbols. Therefore, it can represent more characters than varchar. In MSSQL, each character in the nvarchar data type takes 2 bytes.
Difference between varchar and nvarchar
Definition
Varchar is a data type in SQL that stores a data set of non-Unicode characters of indeterminate length. In contrast, nvarchar is a data type in SQL that stores a character set of Unicode character data of indeterminate length. So this explains the main difference between varchar and nvarchar ..
Long way
Whereas varchar represents the non-Unicode variable length, nvarchar represents the variable length of Unicode data.
Maximum length
In MSSQL, varchar can store a maximum of 8000 characters. However, in MSSQL, nvarchar can store a maximum of 4000 characters. Therefore, storage capacity is also a difference between varchar and nvarchar.
Number of bytes
Also, another difference between them is that varchar takes 1 byte per character, while nvacrahr takes 2 bytes per character.
conclusion
In summary, varchar and nvarchar are two types of data types in DBMS like MSSQL. They define what kind of data to store in the tables. The difference between them is that varchar is a variable-length non-Unicode data type, while nvarchar is a variable-length Unicode data type.
Reference:
1. “Varchar”. Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, October 10, 2018, Available here.
2. “SQL data types”. Www.tutorialspoint.com, Available here.
Courtesy Image:
1. “2394312” (CC0) via Pixabay