in sql server, what is: Latin1_General_CI_AI versus Latin1_General_CI_AS

Question

i am using SQL Compare to compare two versions of a database. it keeps highlighting differences in the nvarchar fields, where it shows one db that has:

Latin1_Ge         


        

Answer 1

What the comparison is showing is that the two columns have difference collations. The collation of a (text) field affects how it is both stored and compared.

The particular difference in your case is that accents on characters will be ignored when comparisons and sorting is done.

When you install SQL Server, you set a default collation for the whole server. You can also set a collation per database and per column, meaning that you can mix them within a database (whether you want to depends on your particular case). The MSDN page I linked to has more information on collations, how to choose the best one, and how to set them.