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Language support for SQL Server

Language support for SQL Server

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Note:This topic was updated for 9.3.1.

The SQL Server collation designator default is based on your Windows system locale. If you want to change the default collation designator, consult the SQL Server Books Online Web site to determine if this is appropriate for your data.

In addition to language, the collation also specifies sort order. ArcGIS supports case sensitive queries but does not support case-sensitive object names (such as table names). Therefore, do not alter the default collation designator to use a case-sensitive sort order, and do not create databases with a case-sensitive sort order. If you need to perform case-sensitive queries against character data in a geodatabase, create your database as case insensitive, then alter the collation of individual character columns to store case-sensitive data.

If you need all your user-defined text fields to store case-sensitive data, you can set the COLLATION_NAME parameter of the DEFAULTS configuration keyword in the SDE_dbtune table to the name of the collation you will use. By default, there is no COLLATION_NAME specified, and the collation of the database is used. This parameter is used in conjunction with the UNICODE_STRING parameter of the DEFAULTS configuration keyword. If UNICODE_STRING is set to TRUE, meaning text is stored using Unicode encoding, ArcSDE uses the collation specified with the COLLATION_NAME parameter to store text data. If UNICODE_STRING is set to FALSE, the COLLATION_NAME parameter value is ignored and the database collation is used.

NOTE: This is especially important for Turkish collation users. Due to uppercasing and lowercasing issues with the letter "i" in the Turkish alphabet, Turkish language users should set the COLLATION_NAME parameter to indicate they are using a Turkish collation.

Third-party applications

If you want to load data into, or retrieve data from, an ArcSDE 9.1 or earlier spatial database using clients other than ArcGIS and those clients are configured to different character encoding standards or code pages, you may have to set the SDE_SQLCHARSET environment variable. Consult the ArcSDE 9.1 Configuration and Tuning Guide for SQL Server .pdf file installed with ArcSDE for information on setting the SDE_SQLCHARSET variable.

See Also

  • Language support in the geodatabase