Re: german sort is wrong

Reinhard Asmus  wrote:
> Am 21.03.2012 14:51, schrieb Kevin Grittner:
>> Reinhard Asmus  wrote:
>>
>>> when i make a sort this is the result:
>>
>>> [vowel with umlaut sorts equal to vowel without]
>>
>>> in german this is wrong. what is the problem?
>>
>> It appears to be one of three different "right" ways:
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_alphabet#Sorting
>>
>> Is there a different collation available on your OS to sort
>> names?
 
> when i make the same thing in oracle i've got
> 
> Ätna
> Anton
> ....
> 
> is it possible to get the same with postgresql and when how?
 
PostgreSQL doesn't implement collations itself; it can only use
collations available from your OS.  It appears that your OS is
defaulting to the dictionary collation and you would prefer the
phone book collation.  The Wikipedia link mentions that Windows
provides both collations; I suspect it's not the only OS that does,
but have no direct knowledge about that.
 
Starting in version 9.1 PostgreSQL can support collation overrides,
for example at the column level.  Provided that your OS provides
both, you could use one for your default collation and override that
for specific columns, which sounds like it might make sense for
German.
 
-Kevin