A SQL Anywhere database can use one or two character sets (encodings) for storing character data. The CHAR data types, including CHAR, VARCHAR and LONG VARCHAR, use a single-byte or multibyte character set. UTF-8 may be used. The NCHAR data types, including NCHAR, NVARCHAR and LONG NVARCHAR, use UTF-8.

When using the LOAD TABLE statement, and functions like CSCONVERT, TO_CHAR, and TO_NCHAR, you can refer to the database character set as db_charset, and to the database NCHAR character set as nchar_charset.

For more information about the CHAR and NCHAR data types, see Character data types.