Define Column Collation Dialog Box

(Microsoft SQL Server 2000 only.) 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 each other or to constant values. It is 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.

This dialog box appears in any of several situations:

• If you enter an invalid collation name in the Collation box in the bottom portion of the Table Designer or in the Columns property page
• If you click in the Collation box in the Columns property page or in the bottom portion of the Table Designer, then click the button appearing to the right of the control.

SQL Collation

Select SQL Collation if you want to choose among the collation sequences defined by 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 lower case 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

Applies to the column the default collation sequence for the database.