> >> - Sophisticated collation support (better than FB)
> >
> > Different, that's for sure.
>
> SQL Server distinguishes character set from collation and defines sub-
> collations for things like case and accent sensitivity. FB requires
> this functionality to be separately implemented in code for EACH
> collation library that you wish to do this for, in spite of the fact
> that it has all the information needed to do it itself for ANY
> collation (using the UPPER hooks). Want a case-insensitive ISO8859_1
> Danish collation? Grab the source code and hack it up! Want that
> collation on a UTF8 column? Same answer. And while it is nice to be
> able to do this at all, it would be of real benefit to many users to
> have it done by the engine itself.
>
> I see multiple postings in here every week asking about how to modify
> existing collations to do these simple tasks, many from folks who
> really aren't very technically sophisticated. Just being able to add
> a new collation based on an existing one but with different compare
> flags would be very nice. I thought I found a page a few weeks back
> on how to do this, but it didn't seem to work (and I think I
> misunderstood the scope).

Fb has quite some collations, both case sensitive and case
insensitive. I don't know if there's a full list anywhere, but
most stuff seems to be done already. So no need to hack
the source ;)

Martijn Tonies
Database Workbench - tool for InterBase, Firebird, MySQL, NexusDB, Oracle &
MS SQL Server
Upscene Productions
http://www.upscene.com
My thoughts:
http://blog.upscene.com/martijn/
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