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About Database Sort Order in the Siebel Environment

Upgrades from: All Supported Siebel releases.

Environments: Development, production test, production.

Databases: All databases.

Sort order (also called collation sequence) is specified during the initial installation of a database and defines the way in which the database sorts character data when executing queries. Sort order support depends on both the code page of the database and whether it is used in a development or a production environment:

• Development environments. For development databases, you must use a binary sort order due to the functional limitations of databases that use a nonbinary sort order.
• Production environments. For production databases, it is strongly recommended that you use binary sort order to prevent possible performance degradation.

The settings for binary sort order are unique for each database platform. See Siebel System Requirements and Supported Platforms on Oracle Technology Network to determine supported settings for your database platform.

Sort Order Considerations for Siebel Databases

If your deployment requires that you use a nonbinary sort order (for example, if your local language does not use binary sort order), you must consider several functional limitations that particularly affect development environment upgrades. If these limitations are unacceptable, consider re-creating your database to use binary sort order. However, be aware of these considerations:

• You cannot use Siebel Tools to generate a Siebel Repository file (SRF) on a database that uses a nonbinary sort order.
• You cannot perform a repository merge on a database that uses a nonbinary sort order.
• Databases that use nonbinary sort order might perform slower than databases that use binary sort order.

See Siebel System Requirements and Supported Platforms on Oracle Technology Network to verify sort order and code page requirements for your deployment.