Question Re: Legacy collation matching in Technology Q&A

Legacy collation matching

Former Member — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 15:51:35 GMT

We unloaded 40 or so databases to Sybase 11 using the "-an" flag and it preserved our legacy collation sequence of "850". However, when we use dbinit to create new databases we are unable to find a collation sequence that matches this legacy "850" collation. Neither "IBM850" nor "850LATIN1" match the sorting properties of the old "850" collation.

We found a collation sequence named "internal - code page 850, multilingual" that appears to have the same sorting properties as the legacy "850" collation.

Can anyone confirm that the two collations are equivalent for sorting purposes?

Re: Legacy collation matching

johnsmirnios — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 18:21:22 GMT

In short, yes they are.

The collation called "internal" appeared in 6.0.1 and was identical to "850". According to what I can dig up, Win 3.1 and Netware versions of SA defaulted to using a collation called "internal" in some places and, due to other changes, "internal" had to be added to the "official" collation list (though as a hidden entry) rather than being generated under the covers when needed.

In 10.0.0, "850" disappeared and "internal" remained. It was probably removed to eliminate duplication when that code underwent some other significant changes but I can't justify why it was "850" that was removed and not "internal".

-john.

Re: Legacy collation matching

Former Member — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 20:42:06 GMT

Thanks, John. This info is extremely helpful.