What is the equivalent of SQL Server for MySQL unicode_ci collation?

Question

As far as I understand, in MySQL unicode_ci (in particular, utf8_unicode_ci) collages are designed to support all characters regardless of locale.

I need to do the same with SQL Server 2008 R2. My database will contain data in different languages ​​(not limited to Latin alphabets). I will not use strings other than Unicode. Which sort should I choose?

Answer 1

You can also go with Latin1_General_CI_AI

The reason is that Unicode data is stored using NVarchar fields, SQL Server is more flexible because it can mix Varchar (1-byte) and NVarchar (2 bytes) data. Thus, to match UTF8, any mapping. As for CI - each individual sorting in 2008 allows you to add a CI specification (this is a checkbox in the "case sensitive" user interface - unchecked for insensitivity).

The last bit, and some others, such as width, are an additional setup on SQL Server.

Point number 2 from http://forums.mysql.com/read.php?103,187048,188748

utf8_unicode_ci is great for all of these languages: Russian, Bulgarian, Belarusian, Macedonian, Serbian and Ukrainian.

If you need sorting for a specific language, where languages ​​handle accents differently, you need a specific dictionary order - see here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms144250.aspx . Otherwise, Latin1_General is based on Latin-American