Sql-server – TSQL- Column DataType Length

sql-server-2012t-sql

Can anyone please explain me the below one. I used the below query in getting the table columns info, but the max length seems to be x*2 of the actual col length. I mean if I have a col with datatype nvarchar(10) the output of my query has max_length value as '20'. I'm little confused here.. A'm I looking at the right one?

SELECT 
    c.name  ColName,
    t.Name 'Data type',
    c.max_length 'Max Length',
    c.precision ,
     c.scale ,
    c.is_nullable,
    ISNULL(i.is_primary_key, 0) 'Primary Key'



FROM    
    sys.columns c
INNER JOIN 
    sys.types t ON c.user_type_id = t.user_type_id
LEFT OUTER JOIN 
    sys.index_columns ic ON ic.object_id = c.object_id AND ic.column_id = c.column_id
LEFT OUTER JOIN 
    sys.indexes i ON ic.object_id = i.object_id AND ic.index_id = i.index_id
WHERE
    c.object_id = OBJECT_ID('Table Name')

Best Answer

The column max_length is the maximum column length in bytes. For the National-Character set string types (NCHAR and NVARCHAR), each character requires two-bytes, so NCHAR(10) would have a max_length value of 20.