> But I suspect this makes this issue independent from the multi-byte
> character sets then, because your N (length in characters) is always 10
> for CHAR(10) regardless of the string stored inside (e.g. 'a') and its
> charset. I mean that XSQLVAR may contain either N = 40 or N = 10, and it
> doesn't change anything for you, as you have to decode the partial
> string anyway. Do I miss anything?

Yes. Size of output buffer, for example. If application must decode
string from UTF8 which is gotten from server into WideString, what size
of buffer must be allocated before call of MultiByteToWideChar? Of
course, I can call the function twice, first time to get required size
and another for real data, but...

SY, SD.