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.

SQL statements like LOAD TABLE and functions like CSCONVERT, TO_CHAR, and TO_NCHAR take db_charset and nchar_charset as parameters to refer to the database CHAR character set and to the database NCHAR character set, respectively.

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