To complicate matters SQL Server can do Nvarchar compression, but they should have just done UTF-8 long ago: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/relational-d

To complicate matters SQL Server can do Nvarchar compression, but they should have just done UTF-8 long ago: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/relational-databases/data-compression/unicode-compression-implementation?view=sql-server-ver17 https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/relational-databases/d... Also UTF-8 is actually just a varchar collation so you don't use nvarchar with that, lol?