Re: Can someone please clarify this for me?

[Trudy Pelzer]

Hi Rudi,

The purpose of specifying a collation for the character columns
in a table is to guarantee that data in those columns will always
be collated using that collation whenever you sort or compare
them.

For example, suppose you have some data that should always
be treated as German data, but most of your data should not.
You have two choices: you can create your table for "german"
data as always, and whenever you sort or compare add a
COLLATE clause to your SQL statement. Or you can create the
table (or specific columns) using the collation directly in the
definition; then, whenever you sort or compare with those
columns, you won't have to use the COLLATE clause because
MySQL will automatically treat the values as "german", based
on your table definition.

Trudy Pelzer, Engineering Project Manager
MySQL AB, www.mysql.com

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