LKBEN11192: What is the difference between the mysql collations of latin1_german1_ci and latin1_german2_ci

Symptom

You need to set a collation but you are not shure what to use for a german database.

Cause

none

Solution

The collation of a database is importtant for the sorting of the data.

latin1_german1_ci = DIN-1 (which is found in dictionaries)

latin1_german2_ci = DIN-2 (which is used for address books)

The difference is latin1_german1_ci uses:

? = A
? = O
? = U
? = s

and latin1_german2_ci uses:

? = AE
? = OE
? = UE
? = ss

For many application these differences are not important, but sometimes they are.

About the Author

Wim Peeters is electronics engineer with an additional master in IT and over 30 years of experience including time spent in support, development, consulting, training and database administration. Wim has worked with SQL Server since version 6.5. He has developed in C/C++, Java and C# on Windows and Linux in different European countries and different European languages. He writes knowledge base articles to solve IT problems and publishes them on the Lubby Knowledge Platform where he is one of the most important contributors and the main developer.

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