What is Collation in SQL Server ?

Collation refers to  set of rules that determine how data is sorted and compared. Character data is sorted using rules that define the correct character sequence, with options for specifying case sensitivity, accent marks, kana character types and character width.

You can check you database collation using below query :

SELECT DATABASEPROPERTYEX('YourDatabaseName', 'Collation') SQLCollation;

if it reutrns Latin1_General_CI_AS it means :

Arguments

SortRules

A string identifying the alphabet or language whose sorting rules are applied when dictionary sorting is specified. Examples are Latin1_General or Polish.

Pref

Specifies uppercase preference.

Codepage

Specifies a one to four digit number identifying the code page used by the collation. CP1 specifies code page 1252, for all other code pages the complete code page number is specified. For example, CP1251 specifies code page 1251 and CP850 specifies code page 850.

CaseSensitivity

CI specifies case-insensitive, CS specifies case-sensitive.

AccentSensitivity

AI specifies accent-insensitive, AS specifies accent-sensitive.

BIN

Specifies the binary sort order is to be used.

Detail can be found at :http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa258233(v=sql.80).aspx

Thanks For Reading..!!

Default programmer