Version info: I'm using ActiveState Perl, version 5.008008. The operating system is Windows XP Pro, SP2. The database is MS SQL Server 2000, SP3. The DBI version is 1.50. The DBD-ODBC version is 1.13. The code below runs stand-alone, e.g., not in a Web server.

(By the way, changing the column type from varchar to ncharvar doesn't affect the results.)

Here's the code. Be warned that the code contains some UTF-8 characters that are not Latin-1: If you want to test the program, just change the DBI->connect line.

use strict;
use DBI;
use charnames ':full';

use vars qw($trace);

print "Perl version is $]\n";

#  Output is "Perl version is 5.008008"

my $text1 = 'Priorit' . 
            "\N{LATIN SMALL LETTER A WITH DIAERESIS}" .
            't';

my $text2 = 'Priorität';

if ($text1 eq $text2) {print 'Equal '};
if ($text1 ne $text2) {print 'Different '};
print length($text1) . ' ' . length($text2) . "\n";

#  Output is "Equal 9 9"

#     Connect to the database and create a database handler
my $dbh = DBI->connect('dbi:ODBC:dataSource', 'userID', 'password',
                       { RaiseError => 0, AutoCommit => 0 } )
                 || die $DBI::errstr;

do_sql(<<'--------');
CREATE TABLE dummy1 (
  id1  int         NOT NULL, 
  str1 varchar(50) NOT NULL
) ON [PRIMARY]
--------

do_sql("INSERT INTO dummy1 (id1, str1) VALUES(1, '$text1')");
do_sql("INSERT INTO dummy1 (id1, str1) VALUES(2, '$text2')");

#  According to the SQL Query Analyzer program, the table contains:
#    1, 'Priorität' (a 10 character value)
#    2, 'Priorität'  (a  9 character value)

my $array_ref = $dbh->selectall_arrayref('SELECT * FROM dummy1');

for my $r (@$array_ref) {
   print ${$r}[0] . ': ' . length(${$r}[1]) . "\n";
}

#  Output is 
#    1: 10
#    2: 9

$dbh->commit;
$dbh->disconnect || warn $dbh->errstr;


sub do_sql {
  $dbh->do($_[0]);
  if ($dbh->errstr())  {
     print STDERR 'error number = ' . $dbh->err() . "\n";
     print STDERR "The following SQL statement failed:\n$_[0]\n";
     $dbh->disconnect || warn $dbh->errstr;
     die;
  }
}
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