24.3.3 The INFORMATION_SCHEMA COLLATIONS Table

The COLLATIONS table provides information about collations for each character set.

The COLLATIONS table has these columns:

COLLATION_NAME
The collation name.
CHARACTER_SET_NAME
The name of the character set with which the collation is associated.
ID
The collation ID.
IS_DEFAULT
Whether the collation is the default for its character set.
IS_COMPILED
Whether the character set is compiled into the server.
SORTLEN
This is related to the amount of memory required to sort strings expressed in the character set.

Collation information is also available from the SHOW COLLATION statement. See Section 13.7.5.4, “SHOW COLLATION Statement”. The following statements are equivalent:

SELECT COLLATION_NAME FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLLATIONS
  [WHERE COLLATION_NAME LIKE 'wild']

SHOW COLLATION
  [LIKE 'wild']