Sql – Intellisense and code formatting T-SQL for SQL Server 2008 in Visual Studio 2008

don't forget about transactions. Performance is good, but simple (IF EXISTS..) approach is very dangerous.
When multiple threads will try to perform Insert-or-update you can easily get primary key violation.

Solutions provided by @Beau Crawford & @Esteban show general idea but error-prone.

To avoid deadlocks and PK violations you can use something like this:

begin tran
if exists (select * from table with (updlock,serializable) where key = @key)
begin
   update table set ...
   where key = @key
end
else
begin
   insert into table (key, ...)
   values (@key, ...)
end
commit tran

or

begin tran
   update table with (serializable) set ...
   where key = @key

   if @@rowcount = 0
   begin
      insert into table (key, ...) values (@key,..)
   end
commit tran

Just to clear up... or sum up...

• nchar and nvarchar can store Unicode characters.
• char and varchar cannot store Unicode characters.
• char and nchar are fixed-length which will reserve storage space for number of characters you specify even if you don't use up all that space.
• varchar and nvarchar are variable-length which will only use up spaces for the characters you store. It will not reserve storage like char or nchar.

nchar and nvarchar will take up twice as much storage space, so it may be wise to use them only if you need Unicode support.