Are you querying the sharepoint DB from sharepoint? In SSMS, either of these seem to work right. What is the wrong result you are getting and what do you expect to get? Post some sample data? In the example below all of the selects return a row.create table #tmp (nvarchar1 nvarchar(255));insert into #tmp values (N'the bigger');select * from #tmp WHERE nvarchar1 = 'the bigger'select * from #tmp WHERE CONVERT(VARCHAR(10),nvarchar1) ='the bigger';select * from #tmp WHERE CONVERT(VARCHAR(10),nvarchar1) = convert(nvarchar(10),'the bigger');drop table #tmp;