The difference between VarChar and NVarChar

Thursday, October 27, 2005

I was asked recently by a solid developer (one of the best I know, in fact) about the difference between the TSQL varchar and nvarchar data types. I was surprised he didn't know this. So, I thought it might be helpful to post it on my Blog, as well.

In Microsoft SQL Server, the only difference between varchar and nvarchar is that nvarchar is UNICODE (also called double-byte). If you declare columns as:

Myvarchar nvarchar(255)
MyNvarchar nvarchar(255)

The Myvarchar column will use 255 bytes in your table, where the MyNvarchar column will use 510 bytes in your table.

Basically, if you need to support other languages in your product you should use nvarchar data type. If you are sure you will never localize the product, then you can use varchar.

The future of the Web

Friday, October 14, 2005

Podcasts are becoming more and more popular, aren't they!? I was just thinking about where I would be right now had me and a few friends actually continued doing 4guystech recording sessions. We would have been about four years ahead of everyone else.. Oh well.. The geographic restrictions pretty much killed any chance of success with regular meetings..

Anyway.. If any of you listen to any podcasts regularly, drop a link, I'd like to hear some good ones?

One of the best things that came from the Web 2.0 conferences held recently was the survey of your average teenage Internet user. These are the people who will shortly overpower (in numbers) any other group of people.. obviously..

I can't help but wonder how this will affect the "rest of us (developers, geeks, etc.)!" That session was an eye opener for a lot of people and a reminder to me as a developer (and technology enthusiast) that no matter how hard I try, my view of the Internet gets skewed from the "normal" persons perspective about the Internet and technology in general.

For instance, none of the teenagers in the survey want to watch video on IM clients nor do anything else with them, but chat. None of them had even heard of Skype! It seemed clear that were likely to just wait to IM someone if they aren't available, instead of resorting to email. Basically, they use IM, LiveJournal (or another blogging site), and Google. That's it. Oh, wait.. they still pirate music too..

So, what else do they need on the Web? What do they want on the Web? What is the next killer app? And, more importantly that we mustn’t forget.. why?