Comparing databases with non-Unicode Characters

alaistair

I have had the following error message :

Found a low surrogate char without a preceding high surrogate at index : 7. The input may not be in this encoding, or may not contain valid Unicode (UTF-16) characters.
Parameter name: chars

I have a table in my SQL Server 2000 databases that holds encrypted information that seems to be causing the problem during a compare, the error occurs when I have selected both SQL Server 2000 databases and clicked 'Compare'

Hope this helps,

Al

Brian Donahue

Hello,

I hope I'm not intruding, but I'd like to mention that this is probably the same issue that we have with the current version, caused by binary data being inserted into a text field.

Any bytes within a certain range cannot be resolved to Unicode because a certain byte will signal a continuation past 16 bits and the next byte contains invalid data.

I'm told that there may be no relief from this!

richardjm

Brian speaks the truth - there are certain selections of bytes that simply shouldn't be put into character fields. If you find yourself storing encrypted information in your database you should seriously consider putting this into a varbinary or image field.

alaistair

Very true, I shall pass on your comments to the DB designers for that project!

Thanks,

Al