Things to consider when you configure collation settings for SQL Server 2000 databases or SQL Server 2005 databases that are used by SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and by Windows SharePoint Services (843578)

INTRODUCTION

This article discusses things to consider when you configure collation settings in Microsoft SQL Server 2000 or in Microsoft SQL Server 2005 for the databases that are used by Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and by Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services.

MORE INFORMATION

The physical storage of character strings in SQL Server 2000 and in SQL Server 2005 is controlled by collations. A collation specifies the bit patterns that represent each character and specifies the rules that are used to sort and compare characters.

Use the Latin1_General_CI_AS_KS_WS collation for SharePoint Portal Server 2003 databases and for Windows SharePoint Services databases. SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and Windows SharePoint Services use the Latin1_General_CI_AS_KS_WS collation because the Latin1_General_CI_AS_KS_WS collation most closely matches the Microsoft Windows NTFS file system collation. The following are characteristics of the collation that is used by SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and by Windows SharePoint Services:

Case insensitive
Accent sensitive
Kana sensitive
Width sensitive

REFERENCES

For additional information about how to transfer a database from one collation to another collation in SQL Server 2000, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

325335 How to transfer a database from one collation to another collation in SQL Server

For additional information about how to troubleshoot a collation issue in SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and in Windows SharePoint Services, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

832814 You receive an "Error accessing database" error message and other error messages when you try to create a SharePoint Portal Server 2003 or a Windows SharePoint Services configuration database

For additional information about collations in SQL Server 2000, visit the following Microsoft Web sites:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/architec/8_ar_da_6ttf.asp
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/architec/8_ar_da_1pwz.asp
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/tsqlref/ts_ca-co_5z55.asp