面向全球用户，存储多语言字符应选用何种SQL排序规则？

Hey there! When supporting a global user base with languages spanning Japanese, Persian, English, Russian, and more, your current SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CA_AS falls short because it’s tied to the Latin1 character set—way too limited for non-Western languages. Here are the best options to cover all your needs:

1. UTF-8 Collation (Best for Modern SQL Server) #

If you’re running SQL Server 2019 or newer, Latin1_General_100_CI_AS_SC_UTF8 is your ideal choice. Here’s why:

• It leverages UTF-8 encoding, which natively supports every major language (and even rare scripts/emojis) out there. No more missing characters for Russian Cyrillic, Japanese kanji, or Persian Arabic script.
• The _SC suffix adds support for supplementary characters—handy if your users might input less common symbols or emojis.
• _CI_AS means case-insensitive, accent-sensitive sorting—this is a safe default for most applications, but you can swap to _CS_AS if you need strict case sensitivity.

2. Universal Unicode Collation (For Older SQL Server Versions) #

If you’re stuck on a version before 2019, go with Latin1_General_100_CI_AS_SC (a Unicode-based Windows collation). While it doesn’t use UTF-8, it’s designed to handle all Unicode characters, so it’ll work for your mix of languages. The _SC again covers supplementary characters, and the sorting logic is consistent across different scripts.

Critical Note #

Don’t forget to use nvarchar/nchar data types for your text columns (instead of varchar/char). These types are built for Unicode storage, so even with the right collation, using non-Unicode column types will still cause character loss for non-Latin languages.

If you ever need language-specific sorting (like proper right-to-left ordering for Persian), you can override the collation on individual columns—no need to change the entire database’s default unless you want to.

内容的提问来源于stack exchange，提问作者Davood