MS SQL Server Interview Question:

What Is a Collation in MS SQL Server?

Submitted by: Administrator

A collation is a set of rules defining a character set and its sorting rules. SQL Server support a large number of built-in collations. For example:

* Albanian_CI_AI_KS_WS - Albanian, case-insensitive (CI), accent-insensitive (AI), kanatype-sensitive (KS), width-sensitive (WS).
* Arabic_CI_AS_KS_WS - Arabic, case-insensitive, accent-sensitive, kanatype-sensitive, width-sensitive.
* French_CI_AI - French, case-insensitive, accent-insensitive, kanatype-insensitive, width-insensitive.
* Korean_Wansung_BIN - Korean-Wansung, binary sort.
* SQL_Latin1_General_CP1250_CI_AS - Latin1-General, case-insensitive, accent-sensitive, kanatype-insensitive, width-insensitive.

If you want to get a list of all collations support on the SQL Server, run this statement:

SELECT * FROM fn_helpcollations()
GO

Submitted by: Administrator