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SQL Server FAQ - Collation - Character Set and Sorting Rules

By: FYIcenter.com

(Continued from previous topic...)

What Is a Collation?

A collation is a set of rules defining a character set and its sorting rules. SQL Server support a large number of built-in collations. For example:

• Albanian_CI_AI_KS_WS - Albanian, case-insensitive (CI), accent-insensitive (AI), kanatype-sensitive (KS), width-sensitive (WS).
• Arabic_CI_AS_KS_WS - Arabic, case-insensitive, accent-sensitive, kanatype-sensitive, width-sensitive.
• French_CI_AI - French, case-insensitive, accent-insensitive, kanatype-insensitive, width-insensitive.
• Korean_Wansung_BIN - Korean-Wansung, binary sort.
• SQL_Latin1_General_CP1250_CI_AS - Latin1-General, case-insensitive, accent-sensitive, kanatype-insensitive, width-insensitive.

If you want to get a list of all collations support on the SQL Server, run this statement:

SELECT * FROM fn_helpcollations()
GO

(Continued on next topic...)

1. What Is a Constant or Literal?
2. How To Write Character String Constants or Literals?
3. What Is a Collation?
4. How To Specify the Collation for a Character Data Type?
5. What Happens If Strings Are Casted into Wrong Code Pages?
6. How To Find Out What Is the Default Collation in a Database?
7. How Fixed Length Strings Are Truncated and Padded?
8. How To Enter Unicode Character String Literals?
9. How To Enter Binary String Literals?
10. How To Enter Date and Time Literals?
11. Why I Can Not Enter 0.001 Second in Date and Time Literals?
12. What Happens If Date-Only Values Are Provided as Date and Time Literals?
13. What Happens If Time-Only Values Are Provided as Date and Time Literals?
14. What Are Out-of-Range Errors with Date and Time Literals?
15. What Happens If an Integer Is Too Big for INT Date Type?
16. How Extra Digits Are Handled with NUMERIC Data Type Literals?
17. How REAL and FLOAT Literal Values Are Rounded?
18. What Are the Underflow and Overflow Behaviors on FLOAT Literals?