A brief note on collations. In this case:

SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS

V

SQL_Latin1_General_CP850_CI_AS

What is the difference?

Firstly, some terminology:

Code Page – 1-4 digit number specifying code page. This code page define the bit patterns for the characters

Case Sensitivity - CS – case sensitive, CI - insensitive

Accent Sensitivity - AI – accent insensitive, AS accent sensitive

In the collations given above,

CP1 = code page 1252

CP850 = code page 850

Code page 1252 is Latin(ANSI)

Code Page 850 is Multilingual(MS-DOS Latin1)

Looking at the 2 collations above – they are:

1)Both SQL collations

2)They are both Case Insensitive and Accent sensitive

3)The use different code pages.

It is important to remember that whatever code page is chosen, it must be supported by the underlying operating system. If the users are using the same language that is straightforward, if different users are using different languages in the same instance, than collation choices need to be adjusted.

Further, in the Multilanguage environment – consideration should be given to using Unicode based columns – (nchar, nvarchar, ntext). This allows more effective code page conversion

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