--- In firebird-support@yahoogroups.com, Peter Lee <ptle@r...> wrote:
> Thanks for the info. We'll try to avoid order by etc... the only other
> option is to ship our product with multiple databases, or the
ability to
> generate a database with a different character set, which we're not
really
> keen on doing.

It's some hassle but we decided to generate new databases at
installation time for our product. Time will tell the disadvantages of
this approach.

A radically different approach, taken by competitors like MS-SQL, is
to use a "system" charset/collation, delegating charset transcoding
and sort order to the OS. Some major trouble is to be expected, namely:

- indices must be rebuilt, databases may become invalid (UNIQUE
constraints) after each OS upgrade (or even ServicePack)

Regards,
Peter Jacobi