Collation Dialog Box
Lets you specify a collation sequence for the column. A column's collation sequence is used in any operation that compares values of the column to another column or to constant values. It also affects the behavior of some string functions, such a SUBSTRING and CHARINDEX. For a complete list of the effects of a column's collation setting, see the SQL Server documentation.
Note
This dialog box is only available when you are working with Microsoft SQL Server 2000 or later.
This dialog box appears in any of several situations:
If you enter an invalid collation name in the Collation field in the Column Properties tab.
If you click in the Collation field in the Column Properties tab, then click the ellipses (…) to the right of the field.
Note
Your computer might show different names or locations for some of the Visual Studio user interface elements in the following instructions. The Visual Studio edition that you have and the settings that you use determine these elements. For more information, see Visual Studio Settings.
SQL Collation
Select SQL Collation if you want to choose among the collation sequences defined by Microsoft SQL Server. Then select a collation sequence from the drop-down list.Windows Collation
Select Windows Collation if you want to choose among the collation sequences defined by Windows. Then select a collation sequence from the drop-down list.Binary Sort
Applies only if you select Windows collation. Select this if you want comparison operations to use the binary codes of character values for comparison. If you select this option, certain alphabetic comparison options become unavailable. For example, making case-insensitive comparisons becomes unavailable because uppercase letters and lowercase letters have different binary encodings.Dictionary Sort
Applies only if you select Windows collation. Select this if you want comparison operations to use certain alphabetic comparison options. The alphabetic comparisons options are:Case Sensitive Select this if you want comparisons to consider uppercase and lowercase letters to be unequal.
Accent Sensitive Select this if you want comparisons to consider accented and unaccented letters to be unequal. If you select this, comparisons will also consider differently accented letters to be unequal.
Kana Sensitive Select this if you want comparisons to consider katakana and hiragana Japanese syllables to be unequal.
Width Sensitive Select this if you want comparisons to consider half-width and full-width characters to be unequal.
Restore Default Button
Applies to the column the default collation sequence for the database.
See Also
Concepts
Working with Columns in Aggregate Queries