Available Sort Orders for Character Sets

The sort order determines the collating sequence SAP ASE uses to order, compare, and index character data. Each character set comes with one or more sort orders.

Sort orders are located in sort order definition files (.srt files) that accompany your character set definition files.

Note: Available sort orders vary according to the character set installed on SAP ASE.

You can see the available sort orders for your character set by looking in the .srt file for your language. Sort orders are stored in:

$SYBASE/charsets/<charset_name>/*.srt

You can specify sort orders during installation, or later, using the sqlloc utility.

Sort Order Name	Description
Binary order	Sorts all data according to numeric byte values for that character set. Binary order sorts all ASCII uppercase letters before lowercase letters. Accented or ideographic (multibyte) characters sort in their respective standards order, which may be arbitrary. All character sets have binary order as the default. If binary order does not meet your needs, specify one of the other sort orders during installation, or by, using the sqlloc utility.
Dictionary order, case sensitive, accent sensitive	Sorts each uppercase letter before its lowercase counterpart, including accented characters. Recognizes the various accented forms of a letter and sorts them after the associated unaccented letter.
Dictionary order, case insensitive, accent sensitive	Uppercase letters are equivalent to their lowercase counterparts and are intermingled in sorting results.
Dictionary order, case insensitive, accent insensitive	Diacritical marks are ignored.
Dictionary order, case insensitive with preference	A word written with uppercase letters is equivalent to the same word written with lowercase letters. Uppercase and lowercase letters are distinguished only when you use an order by clause. The order by clause sorts uppercase letters before it sorts lowercase. Do not select this sort order unless your installation requires that uppercase letters be sorted before lowercase letters in otherwise equivalent strings for order by clauses. Using this sort order may reduce performance in large tables when the columns specified in an order by clause match the key of the table’s clustered index.
Alternate dictionary order, case sensitive	Use with several of the Western European languages.
Alternate dictionary order, case insensitive, accent insensitive	Use with several of the Western European languages.
Alternate dictionary order, case insensitive, uppercase preference	Use with several of the Western European languages.
Spanish dictionary order, case sensitive	Use with Spanish and for most Latin American locales.
Spanish dictionary order, case insensitive	Use with Spanish and for most Latin American locales.
Spanish dictionary order case insensitive, accent insensitive	Use with Spanish and for most Latin American locales.
Scandinavian dictionary order, case sensitive	Case-sensitive dictionary sort order. Use with Scandinavian languages.
Scandinavian dictionary order, case insensitive, uppercase preference	Use with Scandinavian languages.

Use sqlloc to display the sort orders for the character sets you plan to use. See Configuring Character Sets, Sort Orders, and Languages in the System Administration Guide: Volume 1.