Selecting a Collation to Support a Specific Locale

Address character set issues properly by using the collation which best supports the locale.

1. Determine the default locale of each computing platform in your environment. The default locale is the character set and language of each computer. On Windows operating systems, the character set is the ANSI code page.
2. Determine whether locale settings are appropriate for your environment.
3. If the default settings are inappropriate, choose a character set, language, and database collation that match your data and avoid character set translation.
4. Set locales on each machine in the environment to these values.
5. Create your database using the default collation, or, if the collation does not match your needs, use a named collation.
6. When choosing the collation for your database,
   1. Choose a collation that uses a character set and sort order the appropriate for the data. Several collations (some OEM and some ANSI) may meet this requirement.
   2. Choose a collation that avoids the need for character set translation, which carries a performance cost, as well as extra complexity in system configuration. You can avoid character set translation by using a collation sequence in the database that matches the character set in use on your client machine operating system.