title: Is it safe to convert varchar and char into nvarchar and nchar in SQL Server?
body: <p>We currently have a number of columns in the database which are of type <code>varchar</code>. The application that uses them are in C# and it uses Linq2Sql for the communication (or what to call it). </p>
  
  <p>We would like to support unicode characters, which means we would have to convert the <code>varchar</code> columns into <code>nvarchar</code>. Is this a safe operation? Is it just a matter of changing the column type and updating the dbml file, or are there more stuff that needs to be done? Any changes in the C# code? Do I need to somehow convert the text that already exist in the database manually, or is it handled for me?</p>