This post is not written for an architect or DBA who has to choose a collation and wants an in-depth explanation, but for a developer (perhaps one with an error to fix) who needs a primer on the subject.

Put very simply, collations have to do with languages and with the rules used to compare characters. This is relevant in joins and sorting. You might think that a collation ought to be specified for the query; that in your sql statement you should determine the rules to use for comparing values. You can do that (although you’ll set it at column, not query level), but the columns in the tables have a collation property which is what the query uses by default. This is a convenience as it standardises comparisons and saves you having to specify the rules over and over again. It’s when the two conflict that you have an error which may make it necessary to override one or more default collations. Continue reading Sql Server Collation Cheat Sheet →