How to set database encoding by default?

Question

How to set the standard encoding of a local server SQL server database?

Thanks.

EDIT: Removed UTF-8

Answer 1

Assuming you mean sorting when encoding, you can change the default value for new databases, for example:

alter database model collate SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS 

Change the sorting of an existing database:

 alter database YourDbName collate SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS 

The list of available mappings is returned by the system function:

 select * from fn_helpcollations() 

Answer 2

SQL Server does not support UTF-8.

Use nvarchar (UTF-16) if you don't mind using double space or varbinary if you don't need sorting / indexing / comparison.

It may be supported in the next version of SQL Server according to this post.

Answer 3

 /*!40101 SET NAMES utf8 */ 

Something like that