What is the difference between VARCHAR and VARCHAR2?

The main difference is that VARCHAR is ANSI Standard and VARCHAR2 is Oracle standard. The VarChar2 data type is used to store the character values. It is a variable-length data type i.e we can change the size of the character variable at execution time. Hence, it is also called a Dynamic datatype.

What is difference between VARCHAR2 and CHAR?

Differences: CHAR vs VARCHAR vs VARCHAR2 CHAR is different. CHAR does not need a size specified and has a default of 1. A size needs to be specified with VARCHAR/VARCHAR2 columns. CHAR will pad spaces to the right of strings to match the length of the column, while VARCHAR/VARCHAR2 does not.

Which is better NVARCHAR or VARCHAR?

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.

Should I use Nchar or NVARCHAR?

If your column will store a fixed-length Unicode characters like French, Arabic and so on characters then go for NCHAR. If the data stored in a column is Unicode and can vary in length, then go for NVARCHAR.

What is a VARCHAR2 in SQL?

The VARCHAR2 data type specifies a variable-length character string in the database character set. You specify the database character set when you create your database. When you create a table with a VARCHAR2 column, you must specify the column length as size optionally followed by a length qualifier.

What is difference between CHAR and VARCHAR and nvarchar in SQL?

char and nchar are fixed-length which will reserve storage space for number of characters you specify even if you don’t use up all that space. varchar and nvarchar are variable-length which will only use up spaces for the characters you store. It will not reserve storage like char or nchar .

Why CHAR is faster than VARCHAR2?

Searching is faster in CHAR as all the strings are stored at a specified position from the each other, the system doesnot have to search for the end of string. Whereas in VARCHAR the system has to first find the end of string and then go for searching.

Should I use VARCHAR or CHAR?

If you use char or varchar, we recommend to: Use char when the sizes of the column data entries are consistent. Use varchar when the sizes of the column data entries vary considerably. Use varchar(max) when the sizes of the column data entries vary considerably, and the string length might exceed 8,000 bytes.

Is nvarchar faster than VARCHAR?

Each character of an nvarchar column requires 2 bytes of storage whereas a varchar column requires 1 byte per character. Potentially, varchar will be quicker but that may well mean that you cannot store the data that you need.

Should I always use Nvarchar?

You should use NVARCHAR / NCHAR whenever the ENCODING , which is determined by COLLATION of the field, doesn’t support the characters needed. Also, depending on the SQL Server version, you can use specific COLLATIONs , like Latin1_General_100_CI_AS_SC_UTF8 which is available since SQL Server 2019.

What is difference between Nchar and CHAR?

char : fixed-length character data with a maximum length of 8000 characters. nchar : fixed-length unicode data with a maximum length of 4000 characters.