Sort Miultiple language data in sql serevr by collation

Question

Envirment: Sql Server 2008 R2 
I have a table Column which have Multiple language data
I need to apply Sorting according to my specified language like Hindi.
How to achive it though collation or something else<br>
**Column Name**: "Comments"<br>
**Type** : Nvarchar(MAx)<br>
**Column data**
This is an example<br>
To je příklad.<br>
هذا مثال على ذلك.<br>
उदाहरण है.<br>
यह एक उदाहरण है.<br>
ಈ ಒಂದು ಉದಾಹರಣೆಯಾಗಿದೆ.<br>
**Output after 'Hindi' sorting should be** :<br>
उदाहरण है.<br>
यह एक उदाहरण है.<br>
This is an example<br>
To je příklad.<br>
هذا مثال على ذلك.<br>
ಈ ಒಂದು ಉದಾಹರಣೆಯಾಗಿದೆ.<br>
I have tried following Script <br>
CREATE TABLE dbo.Data
( unicodeData NVARCHAR(200)
GO
INSERT INTO dbo.Data ( unicodeData)
VALUES
( N'This is an example')
, (N'यह एक उदाहरण है.')
, (N'उदाहरण है.')
, (N'ಈ ಒಂದು ಉದಾಹರಣೆಯಾಗಿದೆ.')
, (N'एक उदाहरण है.')
, (N'هذا مثال على ذلك.')
, (N'To je příklad.');
GO
select * from dbo.unicodeData
order by unicodedata Collate Indic_General_100_CI_AI
Please Give your suggested solution it is very urgent for me
Thanks.
Shashank

Answer 1

Hi
If I understand correctly your data include several languages and you want to select it all together.
sorting by specific culture will lead to a bad sorting, which fit only those specific culture's rows.
you should use different approach, in this case :-)
** I will use UNION
to make it more clear, but you can do it in one select and several ROW_NUMBER in the same select.
First you need an accessory table (Named like UnicodeMapping) which include all unicode characters and the number of the char in unicode (a mapping unicode table). You can use ranges as well, but it will be faster for
the queries if you actually have all the characters, and not just range.
For example this table (I added English and Hebrew... Do the same with all the languages that you need):
create table UnicodeMapping (Charecter nchar(1), UnicodeNum int, CultureN NVARCHAR(100), CollateN NVARCHAR(100))
GO
-- fill the table with main Hebrew characters, using a number table
insert UnicodeMapping (Charecter, UnicodeNum, CultureN, CollateN)
select NCHAR(n), n, 'He-IL', 'Hebrew_CI_AS'
from _ArielyAccessoriesDatabase.dbo.ArielyNumbers
where
n between 1488 and 1514 -- Hebrew
or n between 64304 and 64330 -- Hebrew
GO
-- fill the table with main English characters, using a number table
insert UnicodeMapping (Charecter, UnicodeNum, CultureN, CollateN)
select NCHAR(n), n, 'En-US', 'SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS'
from _ArielyAccessoriesDatabase.dbo.ArielyNumbers
where
n between 97 and 122 -- En
or n between 65 and 90 -- En
GO
-- Do the same with all the languages that you need, and all the UNICODE ranges for those languages
select * from UnicodeMapping
GO
Let's create your table and insert the data (I added a row in Hebrew for the demo, since I did not have the other languages UNICODE mapping.. you can get it from Google)
CREATE TABLE dbo.Data (unicodeData NVARCHAR(200))
GO
INSERT INTO dbo.Data (unicodeData)
VALUES
(N'This is an example')
, (N'यह एक उदाहरण है.')
, (N'उदाहरण है.')
, (N'ಈ ಒಂದು ಉದಾಹರಣೆಯಾಗಿದೆ.')
, (N'एक उदाहरण है.')
, (N'هذا مثال على ذلك.')
, (N'To je příklad.')
, (N'זה רק דוגמה')
GO
Now in the query you can use UNION, and in each part, select only the rows from a specific language.
* In order to know what language this row use, you should use the function UNICODE and compare the result to your accessory table (UnicodeMapping)
** For most cases, it is much better to store the language in the Data table, and not using this complex mapping
each time!
Now in each UNION part you should use the right culture for the select. and you can use something like this:
select unicodeData from (
select unicodeData, UM.CultureN, ROW_NUMBER() OVER (order by unicodedata Collate Hebrew_CI_AS) RN
from Data D
left JOIN UnicodeMapping UM on UNICODE(LEFT(D.unicodeData,1)) = UM.UnicodeNum
where UM.CultureN = 'He-IL'
UNION ALL
select unicodeData, UM.CultureN, ROW_NUMBER() OVER (order by unicodedata Collate SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS) RN
from Data D
left JOIN UnicodeMapping UM on UNICODE(LEFT(D.unicodeData,1)) = UM.UnicodeNum
where UM.CultureN = 'En-US'
UNION ALL
select unicodeData, UM.CultureN, ROW_NUMBER() OVER (order by unicodedata Collate Indic_General_100_CI_AI) RN
from Data D
left JOIN UnicodeMapping UM on UNICODE(LEFT(D.unicodeData,1)) = UM.UnicodeNum
where UM.CultureN is null -- fix this for Hindi in your case
) t
order by CultureN, RN
* if you dont know in advance what languages you have, then you can use dynamic query.
In this solution I find the culture dynamically from the data itself. If you had a language column, then you dont need most of this solution.
*** If you want to sort one language before the other (as
Erland mentioned then you can use his approach)
I hope this useful :-)
  Ronen Ariely
 [Personal Site]    [Blog]    [Facebook]