Collate Table Text For Free

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.

A collation in MySQL is a set of rules used to compare the characters in a specific character set. It is a sequence of orders to any particular set. MySQL supports various character sets, and each character set always uses one or more collation, at least one default collation.

You cannot change the collation of a column that is currently referenced by any one of the following: A computed column. An index. Distribution statistics, either generated automatically or by the CREATE STATISTICS statement.

SQL Server collation refers to a set of character and character encoding rules, and influences how information is stored according to the order in the data page, how data is matched by comparing two columns, and how information is arranged in the T-SQL query statement.

You can specify collations for each character string column using the COLLATE clause of the CREATE TABLE or ALTER TABLE statement. You can also specify a collation when you create a table using SQL Server Management Studio. If you do not specify a collation, the column is assigned the default collation of the database.

To view a collation setting for a column in Object Explorer In Object Explorer, connect to an instance of Database Engine and then expand that instance. Expand Databases, expand the database and then expand Tables. Expand the table that contains the column and then expand Columns.

COLLATE is a clause applied to character string expression or column for textual data types such as char, varchar, text, nchar, nvarchar, and ntext to cast the string or column collation into a specified collation.