Can't we SET COLLATE to coulmn_name without change the settings in Database?

Question

Hi,

I have person table having id, Fname, Lname columns. I want to change the settings from existing SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS to Latin1_General_100_CI_AI_SC_UTF8

for FName and Lname columns in the table.

Can we change at column level? Do we need to change at Database Level?

Please assist me.

Answer 1

Hi @Ramana Kopparapu

Can we change at column level?

Yes, you can.

See this sample:

ALTER TABLE dbo.MyTable 
ALTER COLUMN CharCol VARCHAR(50) COLLATE Latin1_General_100_CI_AI_SC_UTF8

Refer to this doc for more details: Set or Change the Column Collation

Best regards,

Cosmog Hong

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Answer 2

Do we need to change at Database Level?

The collation on database level is mainly a default setting, you you don't define explicit a collation when you create a table/add column.

The effective collation is always defined on column level.

So yes, you can change the collation per column without changing database default collation.