Unicode character string data types are used to store Unicode character strings. SQL Server 2005 supports the following Unicode character string data types:

* NCHAR - Unicode character strings with a fixed length of n characters defined as NCHAR(n). The maximum length is 4,000 characters. NCHAR has two synonyms of NATIONAL CHAR and NATIONAL CHARACTER.

* VARCHAR - Unicode character strings with a variable length of n characters defined as VARCHAR(n). The maximum length is 4,000 characters. NVARCHAR has two synonyms of NATIONAL CHAR VARYING and NATIONAL CHARACTER VARYING. NVARCHAR also has special form as NVARCHAR(MAX), which can store up to 2^31-1 bytes.

* NTEXT - Unicode character strings with a variable length up to 2^31-1 (2,147,483,647) bytes. NTEXT is equivalent to NVARCHAR(MAX). NTEXT has a synonym of NATIONAL TEXT.