In ASE, you can create char and varchar variables up to a length of 16,384 bytes. In MS SQL Server, 8,000 is the maximum. If you need anything larger than that, you have to use (var)char(max). Variables and columns of the type (var)char(max) can contain up to 4 GB of information.

In ASE, nchar and nvarchar values also can be declared up to a maximum of 16,384 positions. You have to bear in mind that in ASE, nchar and nvarchar are UTF-8 encoded. In MS SQL Server nchar and nvarchar are UTF-16 encoded. The MS SQL Server data types nchar and nvarchar correspond to the ASE data types unichar and univarchar.