SQL Server - Collation - Scalability & Portability
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Mo st people (including Developers) if asked about database "collation", will likely look at as if you had two heads. There is a good reason for this - For the most part, no one 'worries' about it, until of course they have a need to migrate data from one server to another, then suddenly it becomes 'one of the most important things in the world' ! Collation governs the set of rules a computer applies when comparing and sorting data. In databases, this means for example when you return a list of items in alphabetical order, what does 'Alphabetical really mean?' For example is "Donut", "DONUT", and "donut" sorted the same way ? - If so you want a case-insensitive collation . How about "éclair" vs "eclair" -If so you want an accent-insensitive collation. Hmm, I suddenly feel a big hungry for a sweet now for some reason ? For the most part we do not have to worry about these things because collation is