Tomaz Kastrun continues an advent of SQL Server 2025. Day 22 looks at the UNISTR() function:
UNISTR() function is a new T-SQL function in SQL Server 2025. It will help you with unicode string literals (e.g.: special characters, emoji, special language alphabets and others) by letting you specify the unicode encoding value of characters in the string.
Difference between NCHAR and UNISTR is that latter will provide more flexibility and ways of handling multiple unicode characters and even escape sequences. You can also define a custom escape character to perform the necessary conversion of Unicode values into a string character set.
Day 23 looks at a new way of concatenating and compound assigning:
Two new features are available in SQL Server 2025 for string operations; both for string concatenation.
The || and ||= combo are basically + and += for string, but it brings T-SQL in alignment with ANSI SQL. I’d still recommend using functions like CONCAT() for NULL-safety, or CONCAT_WS() for NULL-safety plus automatic separator addition, but it does fix a longer-standing pain point around platform compatibility.