Thanks Chris, I looked at Books on line too but what you've quoted here might as well be in Swahili for all it tells me. What on earth is collation? (Yes, I've got a dictionary, but what is Collation about in this context) What practical use is it to specify the collation sequence for a column? I've got no idea what it's going on about.
I have a regular gripe about Microsoft documentation. Frequently they assume you know everything before they tell you anything. For example, I was at a presentation at MS not long ago, and they gave an entire presentation about some acronym, without once saying what the acronym meant. It was a bit of MS jargon they use internally, and I had no idea what it was about, because I didn't know what the term meant. I got the idea it was vaguely about some new product for small businesses, but only because I guessed. Frequently the documentation will tell you "if you want to do xxxx then do this and that, or if you want to do yyyy, then do this or that" but never telling you whether you ought to do xxxx or yyyy, or giving you the explanation that will allow you to make a proper choice. An example is when you install SQLServer, you get to choose which collation sequence you want for your database. But try to find out what the #$%* a collation sequence is, or why you'd want to do one or the other and you're stuffed. So you just pick one at random or let it go for its default and hope for the best. Look at this bit out of books online: [quote] Windows collations are collations defined for SQL Server to support Microsoft Windows(r) locales. By specifying a Windows collation for SQL Server, the instance of SQL Server uses the same code pages and sorting and comparison rules as an application running on a computer for which you have specified the associated Windows locale. For example, the French Windows collation for SQL Server matches the collation attributes of the French locale for Windows.[/quote] If you don't know what "collations" are, what does this tell you? Cheers, Mike Kear Windsor, NSW, Australia AFP WebWorks -----Original Message----- From: Chris Montgomery [mailto:lists@;airtightweb.com] Sent: Wednesday, 13 November 2002 2:25 AM To: SQL Subject: Re: What does this mean please? Tuesday, November 12, 2002, 6:48:14 AM, Robertson-Ravo, Neil (REC) wrote: > The Collation feature (SLQ2K I think) is the way the server represents the > data internally. I am sure its for ISO/Multilungual stuff and what you are > getting is simple a default set by SQL Server (or you can set it yourself). That sounds correct. >From Books Online (BOL): "The physical storage of character strings in Microsoft(r) SQL Server(tm) 2000 is controlled by collations. A collation specifies the bit patterns that represent each character and the rules by which characters are sorted and compared. SQL Server 2000 supports objects that have different collations being stored in a single database. Separate SQL Server 2000 collations can be specified down to the level of columns. Each column in a table can be assigned different collations. Earlier versions of SQL Server support only one collation for each instance of SQL Server. All databases and database objects created in an instance of SQL Server 7.0 or earlier have the same collation." For more about collations, look up "collations, overview" under SQL Server Architecture in BOL. -- Chris Montgomery monty @ airtightweb.com Airtight Web Services http://www.airtightweb.com Web Development, Web Project Management, Software Sales 210-490-3249/888-745-7603 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Archives: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/index.cfm?forumid=6 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/index.cfm?method=subscribe&forumid=6 This list and all House of Fusion resources hosted by CFHosting.com. The place for dependable ColdFusion Hosting.
