Save Accented Characters in SQL Server

Question

We accept the accented characters such as Ḿấxiḿứś from a html form, when using hibernate saves it into the database the string becomes ??xi???

Then I did a SQL update, trying to write the accented words directly into the database, the same result happened.

The desired behavior is to set into the dabase as what it is.

I am using Microsoft SQL Server 2008.

I have tried to google it, someone said I need to change the database collation to SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AI. But I can't find this options from the dropdown.

Answer 1

Only one of these works: nvarchar datatype and N prefix for unicode constants.

DECLARE 
    @foo1 varchar(10) = 'Ḿấxiḿứś', 
    @foo2 varchar(10) = N'Ḿấxiḿứś', 
    @fooN1 nvarchar(10) = 'Ḿấxiḿứś', 
    @fooN2 nvarchar(10) = N'Ḿấxiḿứś';

SELECT @foo1, @foo2, @fooN1, @fooN2;

You have to ensure that all datatypes are nvarchar end to end (columns, parameters, etc)

Collation is not the issue: this is for sorting and comparison for nvarchar