Character Set

A character set is a set of 256 uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols. The printable characters of the first 128 values are the same for all character set choices. The last 128 characters, sometimes referred to as extended characters, differ from set to set. Because there are more than 256 characters used by the languages of the world, each character set has a somewhat different "repertoire" of extended characters.

The selected character set determines the types of characters that SQL Server recognizes in your database data. You should use the same character set for both the client and the server, or your results can be unpredictable. (You must also use corresponding character sets when bulk loading data.) However, if your databases use only the first 128 characters of a character set (if, for example, you don't use characters with diacritical marks), it makes no difference which character set you use because the first 128 characters are the same for all SQL Server character set choices.

Important It is critical that you select the correct character set when you first install SQL Server. If you need to change character sets after you've installed SQL Server, you must rebuild your databases and reload your data.

SQL Server offers three character sets:

ISO 8859-1 (Latin 1 or ANSI)

The default character set. It is compatible with the ANSI characters used by the Microsoft Windows and Windows NT operating systems.

Code page 850 (Multilingual)

Includes all characters for most languages of European, North American, and South American countries. Use this character set when you have MS-DOS-based client applications that use extended characters.

Code page 437 (U.S. English)

Although the most commonly used character set in the United States, includes many graphics characters not usually stored in databases. Unless you have an overriding reason to select this character set, choose code page 850, which provides more compatibility with languages other than United States English.

Note Additional character sets and sort orders are being developed for international users and may be included in those listed by the setup program.

For additional information about SQL Server character set choices, see Appendix A, Character Sets and Sort Orders.