Sybase 12.4.2 - Manual (Page 335)

315
C H A P T E R 9
International Languages and
Character Sets
About this chapter This chapter describes how to configure your Adaptive Server IQ
installation to handle international language issues.
Introduction to international languages and character
sets
This section provides an introduction to the issues you may face when
working in an environment that uses more than one character set, or when
using languages other than English.
When you create a database, you specify a collating sequence or collation
to be used by the database. A collation is a combination of a character set
and a sort order for characters in the database.
Adaptive Server IQ international features
Adaptive Server IQ provides two sets of features that are of particular
interest when setting up databases for languages.
• Collations You can choose from a wide selection of supplied
collations when you create a database. By creating your database with
the proper collation, you ensure proper sorting of data.
Whenever the database compares strings, sorts strings, or carries out
other string operations such as case conversion, it does so using the
collation sequence. The database carries out sorting and string
comparison when statements such as the following are executed:
• Queries with an ORDER BY clause.
• Expressions that use string functions, such as LOCATE,
SIMILAR, SOUNDEX.