I have a column with the following data: SMITH SMITH SMITH SMITH SMITH. When doing a SELECT DATALENGTH from the table, I am getting a value of 72.

However when I copy the column data and pop it in the select statement like the below, I get a length of 36.

SELECT DATALENGTH('JUDITH KOSGEY JUDITH JEPKORIR KOSGEY')

What could be the possible reasoning for this? I do no see any extra spaces or special characters in this text.

CodePudding user response：

If your column is NVARCHAR, it is intended to handle double byte character sets.

Use LEN() instead of DATALENGTH() and you will get the value you are expecting.

CodePudding user response：

This could be because the data column is UNICODE which takes more storage per character. What's the type of the column?