Doing a join across two databases with different collations on SQL Server and getting an error

Question

I know, I know with what I wrote in the question I shouldn\'t be surprised. But my situation is slowly working on an inherited POS system and my predecessor apparently wasn\'t

Answer 1

A general purpose way is to coerce the collation to DATABASE_DEFAULT. This removes hardcoding the collation name which could change.

It's also useful for temp table and table variables, and where you may not know the server collation (eg you are a vendor placing your system on the customer's server)

select
    sone_field collate DATABASE_DEFAULT
from
    table_1
    inner join
    table_2 on table_1.field collate DATABASE_DEFAULT = table_2.field
where whatever

Answer 2

You can use the collate clause in a query (I can't find my example right now, so my syntax is probably wrong - I hope it points you in the right direction)

select sone_field collate SQL_Latin1_General_CP850_CI_AI
  from table_1
    inner join table_2
      on (table_1.field collate SQL_Latin1_General_CP850_CI_AI = table_2.field)
  where whatever