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I am using MS SQL 2008 Express to connect to a shared MS SQL 2008 server where I have a database. The default collation for the DB is currently SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS. Ultimately, I would like to store English, Korean, Chinese, and any other language imaginable in the DB. I have started off by using the following SQL code (that I found here: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/transactsql/thread/5d2ea1a2-32e1-4a82-b6e3-17d2b898babc/) to test things out:

create table zhongwen(mingzi nvarchar(10))
go
insert into zhongwen values (N'有方')
insert into zhongwen values (N'李杰')
insert into zhongwen values (N'空炮鸡蛋')
go
select * from zhongwen
go
create procedure zhongwenfind 
 (@mingzi nvarchar(10))
 AS
 SELECT mingzi FROM zhongwen 
 WHERE mingzi  = @mingzi  
go
exec zhongwenfind N'李杰'
go
drop table zhongwen
go
drop procedure zhongwenfind
go

When I run this code in MS SQL 2008 Express, the results display only several thin boxes. If I copy a set of the thin boxes and paste them in here (the stack overflow ask a question textarea), they show up as proper characters (here I go: 空炮鸡蛋). Is it possible to set MS SQL 2008 Express to display them correctly?

Much more importantly, when I run my PHP site that is ultimately supposed to display the characters correctly to the public, I only get question marks (????). I am using mssql_query() to query the DB. I have the following code at the top of my HTML5 HEAD:

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"/>

...and the following code in my PHP:

header('Content-Type:text/html; charset=UTF-8');

...but I only see the question marks. So, to sum it all up, 2 questions:

1) How do I make this display correctly in MS SQL 2008 Express?

2) How do I make this display correctly in PHP / HTML?

Thanks in advance!

gcdev
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  • I now have my PHP files saved (via Notepad++) in UTF8 without BOM. With this additional setting, when I paste chinese characters into the PHP file itself, upload to server through FTP, and view, those characters show up correctly. However, the characters pulled from the DB are still only question marks (????). To grab from the DB I am using mssql_query and mssql_fetch_array, if that matters. – gcdev Mar 29 '12 at 00:38
  • So I think I found a workaround for my particular issue. The SQL DB was an upsize from an MS Access DB. Apparently, the upsize process didn't do what I would think it should have done. So, I tried uploading the MS Access DB to the website, then running a PHP page that selects all my non-English data from Access and updates the MS SQL db with it. Once I've done that, everything works like a charm. If no one comes up with anything better, I'll post my code for interested parties. – gcdev Mar 31 '12 at 13:14

2 Answers2

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I had similar a requirement, I was able to solve this and am able to display Korean and Japanese [SQL Server 2008 R2 Express and HTML + ASP.NET]

  1. For Database Collation in SQL Server use SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS

  2. While deploying your code on the server/machine - make sure the HTML files are saved as UTF-8 Encoding (To check this - open the file > Save As > check the encoding)

Martin Evans
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Rohit Bathija
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I had same issue in my application, while using accented characters ( getting ???), and I resolved it by changing encoding of database, tables and text fields to utf8_unicode_ci, along with file encodings. In case you are working on a live server, please take backup of db before converting. Also, store your text fields data to blob before updatinng table and fields collation.

Hope it helps!

Surinder Singh
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    MS SQL doesn't have a utf8_unicode_ci collation. You're probably thinking of MySQL? http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5059781/whats-sql-servers-analogue-of-mysqls-unicode-ci-collation – gcdev Apr 04 '12 at 23:09