NLS_SORT

It accepts the monolingual and multilingual values from the Supported Linguistic Sorts tables. All these values can be modified to do case-insensitive sorts by appending _CI to the value. To perform accent-insensitive and case-insensitive sorts, append _AI to the value.

For materialized views and cache groups, TimesTen recommends that you explicitly specify the collating sequence using the NLSSORT SQL function rather than using this attribute in the connection string or DSN definition.

Operations involving character comparisons support linguistic case-sensitive collating sequences. Case-insensitive sorts may affect DISTINCT value interpretation.

NLS_SORT may affect many operations. The supported operations that are sensitive to collating sequence are:

MIN, MAX
BETWEEN
=, <>, >, >=, <, <=
DISTINCT
CASE
GROUP BY
HAVING
ORDER BY
IN
LIKE

NLS_SORT settings other than BINARY may have significant performance impact on character operations.

NLS_SORT can be modified by an ALTER SESSION SQL statement, described in Oracle TimesTen In-Memory Database SQL Reference.

Note:

Primary key indexes are always based on the BINARY collating sequence. Use of non-BINARY NLS_SORT equality searches cannot use the primary key index.

Required Privilege

No privilege is required to change the value of this attribute.

Usage in TimesTen Scaleout and TimesTen Classic

This attribute is supported in both TimesTen Classic and TimesTen Scaleout.

Setting

Set NLS_SORT as follows:

Where to set the attribute	How the attribute is represented	Setting
C or Java programs or UNIX and Linux systems `odbc.ini` file in TimesTen Classic or in the database definition (`.dbdef`) file in TimesTen Scaleout	`NLS_SORT`	Specify the linguistic sort sequence or `BINARY` (default).
Windows ODBC Data Source Administrator	Not applicable

Supported Linguistic Sorts

The tables in this section list the supported values for the NLS_SORT general connection attribute and the NLS_SORT SQL function.

Monolingual Linguistic Sorts

Basic name	Extended name
`ARABIC`	N/A
`ARABIC_MATCH`	N/A
`ARABIC_ABJ_SORT`	N/A
`ARABIC_ABJ_MATCH`	N/A
`ASCII7`	N/A
`AZERBAIJANI`	`XAZERBAIJANI`
`BENGALI`	N/A
`BIG5`	N/A
`BINARY`	N/A
`BULGARIAN`	N/A
`CANADIAN FRENCH`	N/A
`CATALAN`	`XCATALAN`
`CROATIAN`	`XCROATIAN`
`CZECH`	`XCZECH`
`CZECH_PUNCTUATION`	`XCZECH_PUNCTUATION`
`DANISH`	`XDANISH`
`DUTCH`	`XDUTCH`
`EBCDIC`	N/A
`EEC_EURO`	N/A
`EEC_EUROPA3`	N/A
`ESTONIAN`	N/A
`FINNISH`	N/A
`FRENCH`	`XFRENCH`
`GERMAN`	`XGERMAN`
`GERMAN_DIN`	`XGERMAN_DIN`
`GBK`	N/A
`GREEK`	N/A
`HEBREW`	N/A
`HKSCS`	N/A
`HUNGARIAN`	`XHUNGARIAN`
`ICELANDIC`	N/A
`INDONESIAN`	N/A
`ITALIAN`	N/A
`LATIN`	N/A
`LATVIAN`	N/A
`LITHUANIAN`	N/A
`MALAY`	N/A
`NORWEGIAN`	N/A
`POLISH`	N/A
`PUNCTUATION`	`XPUNCTUATION`
`ROMANIAN`	N/A
`RUSSIAN`	N/A
`SLOVAK`	`XSLOVAK`
`SLOVENIAN`	`XSLOVENIAN`
`SPANISH`	`XSPANISH`
`SWEDISH`	N/A
`SWISS`	`XSWISS`
`THAI_DICTIONARY`	N/A
`TURKISH`	`XTURKISH`
`UKRAINIAN`	N/A
`UNICODE_BINARY`	N/A
`VIETNAMESE`	N/A
`WEST_EUROPEAN`	`XWEST_EUROPEAN`

Multilingual Linguistic Sorts

Sort Name	Description
`CANADIAN_M`	Canadian French sort supports reverse secondary, special expanding characters.
`DANISH_M`	Danish sort supports sorting uppercase characters before lowercase characters.
`FRENCH_M`	French sort supports reverse sort for secondary.
`GENERIC_M`	Generic sorting order which is based on `ISO14651` and Unicode canonical equivalence rules but excluding compatible equivalence rules.
`JAPANESE_M`	Japanese sort supports SJIS character set order and EUC characters which are not included in SJIS.
`KOREAN_M`	Korean sort Hangul characters are based on Unicode binary order. Hanja characters based on pronunciation order. All Hangul characters are before Hanja characters.
`SPANISH_M`	Traditional Spanish sort supports special contracting characters.
`THAI_M`	Thai sort supports swap characters for some vowels and consonants.
`SCHINESE_RADICAL_M`	Simplified Chinese sort is based on radical as primary order and number of strokes order as secondary order.
`SCHINESE_STROKE_M`	Simplified Chinese sort uses number of strokes as primary order and radical as secondary order.
`SCHINESE_PINYIN_M`	Simplified Chinese Pinyin sorting order.
`TCHINESE_RADICAL_M`	Traditional Chinese sort based on radical as primary order and number of strokes order as secondary order.
`TCHINESE_STROKE_M`	Traditional Chinese sort uses number of strokes as primary order and radical as secondary order. It supports supplementary characters.