602SQL Documentation Index  

Language and Coding for Character Strings

You can add information about language and coding to character string and CLOB types. This information can have various functions:

The language and coding are specified as follows:

language_and_coding ::= COLLATE language_name [ IGNORE_CASE ]

If the language_and_coding is not specified for a string (or the language_name is ANSI), then it is assumed that the string contains only ASCII characters. These are sorted according to the Latin alphabet. If a string contains non-ASCII characters, it is sorted according to the coding.

Charset specification is essential for national alphabets. Windows applications usually use the charsets Windows cp1250 (Eastern Europe) and Windows cp1252 (Western Europe) for 8-bit coding. If the client enters characters (string or text) in a different coding (e.g. from a browser that uses the ISO-8859-2 charset), the server must be capable of working with this data (compare, sort and change case). This can be done by specifying a charset for the column that is being written.

For the full use of ISO coding (including national sorting), 602SQL Server must be running on Windows 2000 or higher.

If the IGNORE_CASE flag is set, sorting is not case sensitive. This requires a correct language and coding to be determined, so the server may verify which characters are letters, and which are uppercase/lowercase letters.

The set of supported languages may be enhanced with future versions of 602SQL. You can use the CSSTRING and CSISTRING keywords as the language_name for backward compatibility.

Language name Language Coding Windows font script Charset code
ANSI English ASCII *any* 0
CSString, CSIString Czech/Slovak windows cp1250 middleeuropean 1
CZ, SK, CZ_WIN, SK_WIN Czech/Slovak windows cp1250 middleeuropean 1
CZ_ISO, SK_ISO Czech/Slovak iso-8859-2 middleeuropean 129
PL, PL_WIN Polish windows cp1250 middleeuropean 2
PL_ISO Polish iso-8859-2 middleeuropean 130
FR, FR_WIN French windows cp1252 westerneuropean 3
FR_ISO French iso-8859-1 westerneuropean 131
DE, DE_WIN German windows cp1252 westerneuropean 4
DE_ISO German iso-8859-1 westerneuropean 132
IT, IT_WIN Italian windows cp1252 westerneuropean 5
IT_ISO Italian iso-8859-1 westerneuropean 133

When modifying tables using the table designer, the constants CSSTRING and CSISTRING are still used for Czech and Slovak coding.

The string coding discussed here may be different from the database system language (the code table is identical however).