Migrating selected columns to unichar

With a working database running with UTF-8 as the default character set, it becomes a simple matter to convert select columns to univarchar:

% isql -Usa -P
> use xpubs
> go
> alter table authors modify au_lname univarchar(255), au_fname univarchar(255)
> go

The columns are modified to the new datatypes, the data is converted in place, and the index is re-created.