FIX: Uppercase Characters Are Not Sorted Before Lowercase Characters with the Nocasepref Sort Order (319694)

SYMPTOMS

When you use an upper case preference sort order, the uppercase characters and their corresponding lowercase characters are treated as the same character when you perform either a "Descending" or "Ascending" sort.

RESOLUTION

To resolve this problem, obtain the latest service pack for Microsoft SQL Server 7.0. For additional information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

301511 INF: How to Obtain the Latest SQL Server 7.0 Service Pack

NOTE: The following hotfix was created prior to Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 Service Pack 4.

The English version of this fix should have the following file attributes or later:

File name      Version     Platform
------------------------------------
s70979i.exe    7.00.979    Intel
s70979a.exe    7.00.979    Alpha

NOTE: Because of file dependencies, the most recent hotfix or feature that contains the preceding files may also contain additional files.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article. This problem was first corrected in Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 Service Pack 4.

MORE INFORMATION

This problem only occurs if you install SQL Server with an upper case preference sort order, such as:

Sort Order ID = 53, nocasepref_iso Dictionary order, case-insensitive, uppercase preference
Sort Order ID = 43, nocasepref_850 Dictionary order, case-insensitive, uppercase preference

The character set selected makes no difference.

To determine the sort order for your SQL Server program, run the sp_helpsort stored procedure in Query Analyzer.

NOTE: If data is inserted, and you then create a clustered index on the column, the data may sort correctly.