Especially hilarious how SQL server nchar is widechar so most all string data is twice as large as it needs to be. But there isn't a utf8 option to enable! Though this might have been addressed in one of the later versions, I wouldn't be surprised if it was limited to enterprise edition or other crap.
Bloody hell... I looked this up as I was certain it couldn't still be the case. But yes, it is!
This was logged as an issue on Connect in 2008, [1] and Microsoft's response was:
"Thanks for your suggestion. We are considering adding support for UTF8 in the next version of SQL Server. It is not clear at this point if it will be a new type or integrate it with existing types. We understand the pain in terms of integrating with UTF8 data and we are looking at ways to effectively resolve it."
