euro conversion problem

[Louis Joubert]

We are seeing a discrepancy between some SQL 7 SP1 servers in how they deal
with the euro symbol, inserted and retrieved from the same client using
query analyser.

By running this on some servers:

create table #testtbl (euro varchar(10) null)
go

insert into #testtbl values ('?') -- (NB inserting the euro symbol as per
alt-0128, not ? )

select * from #testtbl

drop table #testtbl
go

...I get
euro
----------
?
(i.e. a question mark)

...but elsewhere I get
euro
----------
?
(i.e. the actual euro symbol as per alt-0128)

What should I be comparing between servers that preserve the euro symbol and
the ones that don't? I know (think) it is not a default login language
problem or an ANSI compatibility issue or a regional character translation
problem.

You may be seeing all ?'s (question marks) instead of ? 's (euro symbols)
in this post - hence the bracketed notes. This may well be a part of the
puzzle... Perhaps somebody could explain how SQL Server stores the euro in
the first place because it is not in the character set any of my servers
use:

Character Set = 1, iso_1
ISO 8859-1 (Latin-1) - Western European 8-bit character set.
Characters, in Order
------------------------
! " # $ % & ' ( ) * + , - . / : ; < = > ? @ [ \ ] ^ _ ` { | }
~ ¡ ¢ £ ¤ ¥ ¦ § ¨ © ª « ¬ ­ ® ¯ ° ± ² ³ ´ µ ¶ · ¸ ¹ º » ¼ ½ ¾
¿ × ÷ 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A=a À=à Á=á Â=â Ã=ã Ä=ä Å=å Æ=æ B=b C
=c Ç=ç D=d E=e È=è É=é Ê=ê Ë=ë F=f G=g H=h I=i Ì=ì Í=í Î=î Ï=ï J
=j K=k L=l M=m N=n Ñ=ñ O=o Ò=ò Ó=ó Ô=ô Õ=õ Ö=ö Ø=ø P=p Q=q R=r S
=s ß T=t U=u Ù=ù Ú=ú Û=û Ü=ü V=v W=w X=x Y=y Ý=ý ÿ Z=z Ð=ð Þ=þ

Does anybody know of some good euro docs for NT and SQL Server? (a bit scant
in BOL, msdn and technet unless you could point at an article I missed...)

thanks a million

Louis