FIX: Extended Stored Procedure xp_sendmail Does Not Handle DBCS Correctly (299602)

SYMPTOMS

When you receive an e-mail that is sent by the xp_sendmail extended stored procedure, you may find some garbage characters in the e-mail message.

This problem only occurs when the @message and/or @subject parameters contain the double-byte character set (DBCS) characters, as demonstrated in the following example:

  -- 'N' represents a single DBCS character in this example.
  declare @msg varchar(4)
  select @msg = 'NN'
  EXECUTE master.dbo.xp_sendmail @subject='abcdefg',@message=@msg,@recipients='test'
  go

  EXECUTE master.dbo.xp_sendmail @subject='NN', @recipients='test'
  go

RESOLUTION

To resolve this problem, obtain the latest service pack for SQL Server 2000. For additional information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

290211 INF: How to Obtain the Latest SQL Server 2000 Service Pack

WORKAROUND

To work around this problem, use the nchar/nvarchar data type instead of the char/varchar data type. For example:

  -- 'N' represents a single DBCS character in this example,
  -- except for N prefix for unicode data type.
  declare @msg nvarchar(2)
  select @msg = 'NN'
  EXECUTE master.dbo.xp_sendmail @subject='abcdefg',@message=@msg,@recipients='test'
  go

  EXECUTE master.dbo.xp_sendmail @subject=N'NN', @recipients='test'
  go

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in SQL Server 2000. This problem was first corrected in SQL Server 2000 Service Pack 1.