I posted this question both here and inteh microsoft internatinal news
group.

In ODBC is there any standard method to determine the character set of
a CHAR or NCHAR column? Is it considered the responsibility of the
database or the client to deliver (e.g. via SQLFETCH) or insert (e.g.
via SQLEXECUTE) character data in the correct character set? As far as
I can see this is all done by vendor specific mechanisms.
Tim