Beginning Microsoft SQL Server 2008 ... - S3 Tech Training

Chapter 5: Creating and Altering Tables
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Figure 5-2
Next comes our file name, size, and growth information.
I’ve expanded the dialog out manually to make sure you could see everything. You may see less than
what’s pictured here as the default size of the dialog is not nearly enough to show it all — just grab a
corner of the dialog and expand it to see the additional information.
Next let’s move on to the Options tab, which contains a host of additional settings, as shown in Figure 5-3.
Perhaps the most interesting thing here, though, is the collation name. We have the choice of having each
database (and, indeed, individual columns if we wish) have its own collation. For the vast majority of
installs, you’ll want to stick with whatever the server default was set to when the server was installed
(presumably, someone had already thought this out fairly well). However, you can change it for just the
current database by setting it here.
“Why,” you may ask, “would I want a different collation?” Well, in the English-speaking world, a common
need for specific collations would be that some applications are written expecting an “a” to be the
same as an “A” — while others are expecting case sensitivity (“a” is not the same as “A”). In the old
days, we would have to have separate servers set up in order to handle this. Another, non-English example
would be dialect differences that are found within many countries of the world — even where they speak
the same general language.