Posted by Erland Sommarskog on 11/03/05 01:21

(downlode@gmail.com) writes:
> I am writing to a text column in my SQL Server 2000 database. The text
> comes from a web form in my java web application, where the character
> encoding is ISO-8859-1. (I have no control over the charset, my app is
> a plugin inside another app.)
> Characters such as ?(ascii 128) and '(ascii 146) are inserted into
> the db as '?'.

Hm, in iso-8859-1, the slots 128-159 not graphic characters. In Windows-
1252, Microsoft's extension of 8859-1, some of them are indeed graphic.

> I'm connecting using the free jtds driver, and I'm not specifying any
> details about charsets in my usage of the driver.
>
> Can anyone tell me what the default charset in sqlserver 2000 is?

No, because this depends on the regional settings of the machine. For
instance, if I install SQL Server on my machine, and do not make any
selection, I will get Finnish_Swedish_CI_AS, which implies code page
1252. People in Poland are likely to get Polish_CI_AS, which implies
code page 1250. And that's only the default. This can be overridden
at installation. And then the collation can be set independently by
column.

So start doing

SELECT serverproperty('Collation') -- Server default collation.
SELECT databasepropertyex('db', 'Collation') -- Database default

And then use sp_help to determine the coilations of the columns you
are working with. If you don't know which code page a certain collation
has, there is a function Collationproperty() for this.

If the columns are of different code pages, you will have to use
Unicode somewhere on the way, and as Trevor said, ntext nvarchar are
probably better options.



--
Erland Sommarskog, SQL Server MVP, esquel@sommarskog.se

Books Online for SQL Server SP3 at
http://www.microsoft.com/sql/techinfo/productdoc/2000/books.asp

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