In the event that you’ll be working on databases in computer science, you’ll undoubtedly come across Varchar and Nvarchar. They are 2 different names for data and they have a significant amount of differences between the two.
What is Varchar?
Also known as Variable Character Field, the characters inside of Varchar can be of varying lengths. It’s a type of data column that you will come across if you’re working on data management. The size of the columns can be different, depending on the type of database you’re working with.
As an example, MySQL has a limit of 65,535 characters per row and Oracle 9i has a limit of 4000 characters. Microsoft SQL is known to allow a limit of 8000 when you use Varchar, increasing the total amount to approximately 2 GB.
What is Nvarchar?
Nvarchar isn’t as versatile as Varchar as its limit of data per row is significantly smaller at 4000 characters in comparison to a max of 8000 characters with Varchar. In the event that you go over the total allowed word limit, it can cause a variety of damages to the database such as preventing rows from going over different pages.
The Main Differences Between Varchar and Nvarchar
The main thing that you’ll notice that differs between the two types of data output is the fact that Varchar uses far less space than Nvarchar. This is because Nvarchar requires the use of Unicode, which takes a substantial amount of space due to users having to be very specific with their coding. Every single character that is stored on a database with Nvarchar will require 2 bytes of data. Whereas with non-Unicode data, the value will look substantially smaller as it only requires 1 byte of data.
It’s also important to note that although Nvarchar does take more space in a database, it allows users to solve more problems in regards to incompatibilities with codepages. These can be incredibly difficult for a programmer to deal with manually. With that being said, the amount of size that it takes up can easily be overlooked, as coders will have the ability to store more data in one location without having to worry about failures within the system and other errors they will have to fix.
There are differences between Varchar and Nvarchar, Nvarchar being the data that takes up more space but offers more efficiency in terms of coding.
