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Guidelines for Selecting a Language for Microsoft SQL Server

As part of database creation, you must set the language characteristics of your database, even if you deploy in only one language.

See also Planning RDBMS Installation and Configuration and Specifying the Locale for Siebel Business Applications.

See also Verifying Installation for the Siebel Database.

This topic is part of Configuring a Microsoft SQL Server Database for Siebel Business Applications.

Sort Order

The sort order is a characteristic that requires special consideration regarding the Siebel database. On Microsoft SQL Server, the sort order of a database instance is specified during database creation and defines the way in which the instance will sort character data.

Although each SQL Server system database and each object within a database can have its own unique sort order, you must set the sort order at the database instance level only.

Siebel Business Applications support for a given sort order depends both on the code page of the database and on whether it will be used in a development or a production environment.

For more information about supported sort orders, see the Certifications tab on My Oracle Support.

• Development environment databases. The repository object names in your development environment database must sort using binary sort order, because Siebel Tools uses this sort order internally.

  CAUTION:  When Microsoft SQL Server is installed, the instance is set by default to dictionary sort order and, if this is not changed, then every database inherits this setting. The master database cannot be changed without rebuilding the instance. Therefore, it is strongly recommended that the instance sort order be set to binary at installation time. Consult your Microsoft SQL Server documentation for instructions on setting this sort order.

  NOTE:  Binary sort order is the simplest and fastest sort order to perform in the database. Binary sorting is case-sensitive and is based on the numeric values (for example, 0 through 255 for an 8-bit character set) of the characters in the installed character set.

  Customers are responsible for making sure that their data is backed up and restored correctly.

• Production environment databases. Binary or dictionary sort orders can be used in production environment databases. Binary sort order can give improved performance. For information about production environment database restrictions, see the Certifications tab on My Oracle Support. See also Microsoft SQL Server documentation.