Today I viewed some query examples, and I found some string comparisons in the WHERE condition.

The comparison was made using the greater than (>) and less than (<) symbols, is this a possible way to compare strings in SQL? And how does it act? A string less than another one comes before in dictionary order? For example, ball is less than water? And this comparison is case sensitive? For example BALL < water, the uppercase character does affect these comparison?

I've googled for hours but I was not able to find nothing that can drive me out these doubt.