Stores strings of letters, numbers, and symbols.

Character data can be stored as fixed-length or variable-length strings. Fixed-length strings are right-extended with spaces on output; variable-length strings are not extended.

binary and varbinary

Binary data types of either fixed length or variable length.

Arguments

binary [ ( n ) ]
Fixed-length binary data with a length of n bytes, where n is a value from 1 through 8,000. The storage size is n bytes.

varbinary [ ( n | max) ]
Variable-length binary data. n can be a value from 1 through 8,000. max indicates that the maximum storage size is 2^31-1 bytes. The storage size is the actual length of the data entered + 2 bytes. The data that is entered can be 0 bytes in length.

Examples

SELECT CAST( 123456 AS BINARY(4) );

char and varchar

Are string data types of either fixed length or variable length.

Arguments

binary [ ( n ) ]
Fixed-length, non-Unicode string data. n defines the string length and must be a value from 1 through 8,000. The storage size is n bytes.

varbinary [ ( n | max) ]
Variable-length, non-Unicode string data. n defines the string length and can be a value from 1 through 8,000. max indicates that the maximum storage size is 2^31-1 bytes (2GB). The storage size is the actual length of the data entered + 2 bytes.

Examples

DECLARE @myVariable AS varchar = 'xyz';
SELECT @myVariable as aVarchar;

nchar and nvarchar

Character data types that are either fixed-length, nchar, or variable-length, nvarchar, Unicode data and use the UNICODE UCS-2 character set.

Arguments

nchar [ ( n ) ]
Fixed-length Unicode string data. n defines the string length and must be a value from 1 through 4,000. The storage size is two times n bytes. When the collation code page uses double-byte characters, the storage size is still n bytes. Depending on the string, the storage size of n bytes can be less than the value specified for n.

nvarchar [ ( n | max ) ]
Variable-length Unicode string data. n defines the string length and can be a value from 1 through 4,000. max indicates that the maximum storage size is 2^31-1 bytes (2 GB). The storage size, in bytes, is two times the actual length of data entered + 2 bytes.

Examples

CREATE TABLE dbo.MyTable  
(  
  MyNCharColumn nchar(15)  
 ,MyNVarCharColumn nvarchar(20)  

);  

GO  
INSERT INTO dbo.MyTable VALUES (N'Test data', N'More test data');  
GO  
SELECT MyNCharColumn, MyNVarCharColumn  
FROM dbo.MyTable;

ntext, text, and image

Fixed and variable-length data types for storing large non-Unicode and Unicode character and binary data. Unicode data uses the UNICODE UCS-2 character set.

Arguments

ntext
Variable-length Unicode data with a maximum string length of 2^30 - 1 (1,073,741,823) characters. Storage size, in bytes, is two times the string length that is entered.

text
Variable-length non-Unicode data in the code page of the server and with a maximum string length of 2^31-1 (2,147,483,647). When the server code page uses double-byte characters, the storage is still 2,147,483,647 bytes. Depending on the character string, the storage size may be less than 2,147,483,647 bytes.

image
Variable-length binary data from 0 through 2^31-1 (2,147,483,647) bytes.

Examples

SELECT cast('Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet...' as ntext);