Re: Sorting Problem

Not only SQL Server has all those possible cases for collate,
but it does work very well.

Assigning collate/encoding per column probably too much ( I never used
it in my life )
but assigning collate/encoding per table very much helpful.

Case insensitive collation another very useful thing, which is on by
default ( in SQL Server )
and I really missing it in postgres, although I might probably initdb
with some wacky
case insensitive collate but that's more theoretical then practical.

And of cause on top of that, ability to store UTF-16 data in a column (
build in data type )
independent of db collate would be priceless which SQL Server allow to
do.
Not much of dithyrambs for SQL Server but rather reality.

Thanks.

-----Original Message-----
From: Stephan Szabo [mailto:sszabo(at)megazone(dot)bigpanda(dot)com]
Sent: Wednesday, August 13, 2003 9:32 AM
To: Dennis Gearon
Cc: Dennis Björklund; Maksim Likharev; pgsql-general(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: Re: [GENERAL] Sorting Problem

On Wed, 13 Aug 2003, Dennis Gearon wrote:

> Dennis Björklund wrote:
>
> > In the future we need indexes that depend on the locale (and a lot
of other changes).
> >
>
> I agree. I've been looking at the web on this subject a lot lately. I
> am **NOT** a microslop fan, but SQL-SERVER even lets a user define a
> language(maybe encoding) down to the column level!
>
> I've been reading on GNU-C and on languages, encoding, and
localization.
>
>
http://pauillac.inria.fr/~lang/hotlist/free/licence/fsf96/drepper/paper-
1.html
>
http://h21007.www2.hp.com/dspp/tech/tech_TechSingleTipDetailPage_IDX/1,2
366,1222,00.html
>
>
> There are three basic approaches to doing different langauges in
computerized text:
>
> A/ various adaptations of the 8 bit character set, I.E. the
ISO-8859-x series.
> B/ wide characters
> ********This should be how Postgress stores data
internally.********
> C/ Multibyte characters
> ********This is how Postgress should default to sending data OUT
of the application,
> i.e. to the display or the web, or other system
applications********

SQL has a system for defining character set specifications, collations
and
such (per column/literal in some cases). We should probably look at it
before making decisions on how to do things.