Migrating Selected Columns to unichar

With a working database running with UTF-8 as the default character set, you can convert select columns to univarchar.

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

For example, to migrate a select of columns from the xpubs database to unichar:

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

Note: Currently, the alter table modify command does not support text, image, or unitext columns. To migrate from a text to a unitext column, you must first use bcp, create a table with unitext columns, and then use bcp again to place data into the new table. This migration path only works when you invoke bcp with -Jutf8 option.