SQL Anywhere® Server - Database Administration  > International Languages and Character Sets  > Understanding character sets

Character sets in a SQL Anywhere database

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.

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