Is there such thing as 'Unicode collation'?
internationalization, sql-server, unicode
Solution
Well, there's always a binary collation like Latin1_General_BIN2. It stores the code points in numerical order, which can be pretty arbitrary. It's not culture-specific though (despite the name).
It sounds like there isn't any intelligent way to sort data from multiple languages/cultures together so instead of a half-baked solution, all you can do is sort by the binary values.
Problem
Or if it does not, then what is actually a Sql Server `collation`? Maybe my understanding of collation (as a concept) is wrong. I do not wish to specify my collation to greek or icelandic or even western-european. I wish to be able to use any language that is supported in Unicode. (I'm using MSSQL 2005) UPDATE: Ok, I'm rephrasing the question: Is there a generic, culture-independent collation that can be used for texts of any culture? I know it will not contain culture-specific rules like 'ty' in Hungarian or ß=ss in German, but will provide consistent, mostly acceptable results. Is there any collation that is not culture-specific?