Available Sort Orders

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 syconfig 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

Case-insensitive dictionary sort order. Diacritical marks are ignored.

Dictionary order, case- insensitive with preference

Case preference for collating purposes. 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, which 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

Lowercase variants sorted before uppercase.

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

Use with Scandinavian languages.

Scandinavian dictionary order, case-insensitive, uppercase preference

Use with Scandinavian languages.