International Languages and Character Sets

Configure your Sybase IQ installation to handle international language issues.

When you create a database, you specify a collating sequence or collation to be used by the database. A collation is a combination of a character set and a sort order for characters in the database.

The database collation is used to sort and compare all character data types in the database, including object names, such as table and column names.

Sybase IQ takes advantage of the space efficiency and speed of the SQL Anywhere Collation Algorithm.

Sybase IQ no longer supports custom collations. If you rebuild a database with a custom collation, rebuild in a single step to preserve the custom collation. If you unload the database and then load the schema and data into a database that you create, then you must use one of the supplied collations.

For an introduction to the issues you may face when working in an environment that uses more than one character set, or when using languages other than English, see SQL Anywhere Server – Database Administration > Configuring your database > International languages and character sets > Localized versions of SQL Anywhere > What is ICU, and when is it needed?.

For more information on changes to database collations and a list of collations deprecated in Sybase IQ 15.0, see New Features in Sybase IQ 15.0. Use the iqunload utility to migrate to the current version of Sybase IQfrom an existing 12.7 database that was created with a deprecated collation. For details about iqunload, see the Installation and Configuration Guide.

• Default Collation
  If you use the default actions when creating a Sybase IQ database, your database has the collation ISO_BINENG.
• Understanding Character Sets in Software
  Each piece of software works with a character set, which is a set of symbols, including letters, digits, spaces, and other symbols.
• Understanding Locales
  Both the database server and the client library recognize their language and character set environment using a locale definition.
• Understanding Collations
  A collation describes how to sort and compare characters from a particular character set or encoding.
• Understanding Character Set Translation
  Sybase IQ can carry out character set translation among character sets that represent the same characters, but at different positions in the character set or code page.
• Configuring Your Character Set Environment
  Set up your computing environment so that character set issues are handled properly.
• Locale Information
  Use system functions to determine locale information.
• Setting a Locale
  You can use the default locale on your operating system, or explicitly set a locale for use by the Sybase IQ components on your machine.
• Setting the Locale for an INSERT...LOCATION Statement
  When the database uses a non-default locale for your platform, you must set an environment variable on the local client in order for Sybase IQ to load the correct information for language, collation sequence, character set, and date/time format.
• Creating a Database with a Named Collation
  The default collation for an IQ database is always ISO_BINENG. You can specify a different collation for each database when you create it.
• Disabling Character Set Translation on a Database Server
  You can turn character set conversion on and off explicitly on the database server command line.
• Changing a Database From One Collation to Another
  Changing a database to another collation requires a rebuild of the database. Collations are chosen when databases are created, and cannot be changed.
• Compatibility Issues
  In versions earlier than 12.0, Sybase IQ always used the ASCII sort order, which sorts uppercase characters before lowercase.
• Performance Issues
  Performance for character data is better with a binary character set and collation sequence than with a nonbinary character set and collation sequence.