On Wed, 13 Aug 2003, Dennis Gearon wrote:
> Got a link to that section of the standard, or better yet, to a
> 'interpreted' version of the standard? :-)
The standard draft yes, an interpreted version, unfortunately not (unless
Date's book covers it and I can find where my copy is.
Here are some of the highlights
----
k) form-of-use: A convention (or encoding) for representing
characters (in character strings). Some forms-of-use are
fixed-length codings and others are variable-length codings.
l) form-of-use conversion: A method of converting character
strings from one form-of-use to another form-of-use.
----
A character set is described by a character set descriptor. A
character set descriptor includes:
- the name of the character set or character repertoire,
- if the character set is a character repertoire, then the name of
the form-of-use,
- an indication of what characters are in the character set, and
- the name of the default collation of the character set.
For every character set, there is at least one collation. A
collation is described by a collation descriptor. A collation descriptor
includes:
- the name of the collation,
- the name of the character set on which the collation operates,
- whether the collation has the NO PAD or the PAD SPACE attribute,
and
- an indication of how the collation is performed.
---
The character data types and literals can include a character set
definition. Character type columns can include a collation. There's a
COLLATE <blah> clause that looks like it can be used in expressions as
well.