Allows implicit use of the SORTKEY function on ORDER BY expressions.

Allowed values

Internal, collation_name, or collation_id

Default

Internal

Remarks

When the value of this option is Internal, the ORDER BY clause remains unchanged.

When the value of this option is set to a valid collation name or collation ID, CHAR or NCHAR string expressions in the ORDER BY clause are treated as if the SORTKEY function had been invoked. String expressions that use other string data types, such as BINARY, UUID, XML, or VARBIT are not modified.

See also

• SORTKEY function [String]

Example

Set the sort collation to binary:

SET TEMPORARY OPTION sort_collation='binary';

Having the sort collation set to binary transforms the following queries:

SELECT Name, ID
FROM Products
ORDER BY Name, ID;
SELECT name, ID
FROM Products
ORDER BY 1, 2;

The queries are transformed into:

SELECT Name, ID
FROM Products
ORDER BY SORTKEY(Name, 'binary'), ID;