Does anyone know of any good articles with arguments for NOT running a SQL
Server in case-sensitive mode? I know all the obvious reasons, such as how
much more work it can be because developers have to pay attention to case,
but is this the only reason?

Thanks, Andre

Hi Andre,

In my opinion if you don't have a Business case for installing case
sensitive instance better not to do it. Some of things I can think of from
my expreience.
1. Object names will be case sensitive.
2. Data stored in character data type will be case sensitive, which may some
times affect the application behaviour.

Regards,Balaji
"Andre" <no (AT) spam (DOT) com> wrote

Well, if SQL-Server is running in case-sensitive mode then the data is also
in case sensitive mode; however, most people don't want to have their data
in case sensitive mode.

--
Sylvain Lafontaine, ing.
MVP - Windows Live Platform
Email: sylvain2009 sylvainlafontaine com (fill the blanks, no spam please)
Independent consultant and remote programming for Access and SQL-Server
(French)


"Andre" <no (AT) spam (DOT) com> wrote

Thanks for the replies. I didn't know the data will be stored
case-sensitive too; good to know.

Andre

Well, I should have put a little more explanation on this. On SQL-Server,
all the metadata information - names of the tables, of the columns, etc. -
are stored themselves in tables; so if you install the SQL-Server with a
case-sensitive collation then the collation for the sql-server's system
tables will be case sensitive and the default collation for any new database
will also be case sensitive.

However, when you create a new table or a new column, you can change the
default collation that will be used; so you can chose a case insensitive
collation here. You can also change the default collation of a database
after its creation; this setting will affect new tables and new columns that
will be created after that but will leave unchanged the existing tables and
columns.

So even if you install a SQL-Server in a case sensitive mode, you can still
have a database or a table or a column in case insensitive mode. However,
this relates to the ease of use by the users: the first thing most people
will do would be to forget about these settings; so you will usually end up
with a collection of case sensitivity and case insentivity in your
databases; with the endless possibilities of confusion that can follow.

Of course, if you are in a highly strictly controlled environment; this
won't happen but probably that you wouldn't have to ask about this in the
first place if this was the case.

--
Sylvain Lafontaine, ing.
MVP - Windows Live Platform
Email: sylvain2009 sylvainlafontaine com (fill the blanks, no spam please)
Independent consultant and remote programming for Access and SQL-Server
(French)


"Andre" <no (AT) spam (DOT) com> wrote