On Fri, Nov 03, 2000 at 06:21:58AM +0100, Kay-Michael Goertz wrote:
>
> In Unicode there is an collation algorithm for sorting and
> comparing. Such a mechanism is very useful and universal.
There is?
> Of course, it is possible to put such things in the
> application, but I think, it is not best, if everybody has to
> write this by himself. So it would be nice, if the database
> could do this.
I agree. It'd be great.
How would you sort different languages together? By what rules
would you sort German and English text together? Imagine we could
tag the language with the string, so we could have:
Aesen <GERMAN>
Aesthetic <ENGLISH>
Assign <ENGLISH>
Ästhetisch <GERMAN>
How would we sort them? Like the above? Or (assuming you're looking
in the phone book), according to German sorting rules where Ae == Ä:
Aesthetic <ENGLISH>
Assign <ENGLISH>
Aesen <GERMAN>
Ästhetisch <GERMAN>
You can do one or the other, but you can't do both. You have to decide
to sort by german or english rules, I think. Now, it makes sense to
make this sorting independent of the way the data are stored, so you
could pick which way to sort when you peform the query. But, unless
I'm missing something, I don't see how you can have a universal sort
that makes sense.
> How can this be done?
Good question. Do you have some ideas about it?
Tim
--
__ ___ ___ ____ __
/ |/ /_ __/ __/ __ \/ / Tim Smith <tim@stripped>
/ /|_/ / // /\ \/ /_/ / /__ MySQL AB, Development Team
/_/ /_/\_, /___/\___\_\___/ Boone, NC USA
<___/ www.mysql.com
