What is the collation in SQL Server?

Collations in SQL Server provide sorting rules, case, and accent sensitivity properties for your data. Collations that are used with character data types, such as char and varchar, dictate the code page and corresponding characters that can be represented for that data type.

Which collation is best in SQL Server?

However here are the settings we typically recommend: Set the default collation to SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS. Ensure that you have SQL Server running in Case Insensitive mode. We use NCHAR, NVARCHAR string types so all data is unicode, so no character set is specified.

How do I find SQL Server server collation?

You can get the server collation in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) by right-clicking the SQL instance, then clicking the “Properties” option and checking the “General” tab. This collation is selected by default at the installation of SQL Server.

What is collate SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS in SQL Server?

The collate clause is used for case sensitive and case insensitive searches in the columns of the SQL server. There are two types of collate clause present: SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CS_AS for case sensitive. SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS for case insensitive.

Why do we use collation in SQL Server?

Collations in SQL Server provide sorting rules, case, and accent sensitivity properties to data. A collation defines bit patterns that represent each character in metadata of database. SQL Server supports storing objects that have different collations in database.

What is COLLATE function?

The COLLATE function copies the string, but puts the new collation specification rather than the original specification into the copy. The string itself is unchanged; only the collation specifier associated with the string is changed.

Does collation matter in SQL?

When retrieving data using a T-SQL query, collation plays a fundamental role in the execution. It matters which collation is associated with a column when ordering clause is applied to that column. Users can change the collation settings at the database level but not at the SQL Server level.

How do you measure database collation?

To view the collation setting of a database In Object Explorer, connect to an instance of the Database Engine and on the toolbar, click New Query. In the query window, enter the following statement that uses the sys. databases system catalog view. SELECT name, collation_name FROM sys.

How do you find the collation of a table?

To see the default collation for each character set, use the SHOW CHARACTER SET statement or query the INFORMATION_SCHEMA CHARACTER_SETS table. If COLLATE collation_name is specified without CHARACTER SET , the character set associated with collation_name and collation collation_name are used.

Is SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS case sensitive?

Database collation For example, the default server-level collation in SQL Server is SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS , which is a case-insensitive, accent-sensitive collation.

What is Cyrillic characters for collation?

The Cyrillic character sets and collations are for use with Belarusian, Bulgarian, Russian, Ukrainian, and Serbian (Cyrillic) languages.

• cp1251 (Windows Cyrillic) collations: cp1251_bin.
• cp866 (DOS Russian) collations: cp866_bin.
• koi8r (KOI8-R Relcom Russian) collations: koi8r_bin.
• koi8u (KOI8-U Ukrainian) collations: