MS SQL Server Interview Question:

What Happens If Strings Are Casted into Wrong Code Pages in MS SQL Server?

Submitted by: Administrator

In SQL Server, different collations may use different code pages. For example:

* Albanian_CI_AI_KS_WS - Albanian, Code page 1250.
* Arabic_CI_AS_KS_WS - Arabic, Code page 1256.
* French_CI_AI - French, Code page 1252.
* Korean_Wansung_BIN - Korean-Wansung, Code page 949.
* SQL_Latin1_General_CP1250_CI_AS - Latin1-General, Code page 1250.

If you are casting a string of characters from one code page to a different code page, some character will be converted to similar. For example

PRINT 'Fran?is: e??a?o?;
-- The default code page

PRINT 'Fran?is: e??a?o?
COLLATE French_CI_AI; -- Code page 1252

PRINT 'Fran?is: e??a?o?
COLLATE Polish_CI_AS; -- Code page 1250

PRINT 'Fran?is: e??a?o?
COLLATE Cyrillic_General_CI_AS; -- Code page 1256
GO

Fran?is: e??a?o?
Fran?is: e??a?o?
Fran?is: e?e-aa-o?
Francais: eeee-aa-oo

How find out the default Collation?
Submitted by: Administrator