Implicitly (or proxy) convert to Nvarchar on incoming queries from legacy or 3rd party applications We have a 3rd party application of which we don't have the source code. This application executes queries on our database without using the "N" prefix before literal strings. It does this in inserts and where clauses.

So what we need is a way to translate a query like this:

SELECT Whatever FROM Person WHERE Name = 'John';


to this:

SELECT Whatever FROM Person WHERE Name = N'John';


Is there a way to implicitly force this on SQL server (2005 or higher, I guess if an upgrade is needed it would be acceptable).

Otherwise, does anyone know of a 3rd party proxy that would be able to translate the queries? Building one would be costly, but I think it is feasible. Or could we use some other trick like a trigger or something?

I have already checked if the 3rd party application can handle multi-byte characters in the strings that are sent and returned, that is not a problem at all. The only problem is that it's formatting the queries without using N's. (It should have been using parameters but we can't change it anyway).
I guess the implicit conversion causes index scan, if that is the case, You can use plan guides and force index seek without changing the source code.