What does "collation" mean?
Basically, how to sort and compare strings.

Examples:

Comparing:


Accent: à vs ä vs a
Case: A vs a


Sorting:


Swedish: z -> å -> ä -> ö
Danish: z -> æ -> ø -> å


Special character equivalence


German ß = ss


Wikipedia

Some SQL (SQL Server 2008+)

DECLARE @foo TABLE (bar varchar(2))
INSERT @foo VALUES ('z'), ('æ'), ('ø'), ('å'), ('ss'), ('ß'), ('a'), ('ä')

SELECT * FROM @foo ORDER BY bar COLLATE Finnish_Swedish_100_CI_AS
SELECT * FROM @foo ORDER BY bar COLLATE Norwegian_100_CI_AS
SELECT * FROM @foo ORDER BY bar COLLATE Latin1_General_100_CS_AS --german (western europe) and default
SELECT * FROM @foo ORDER BY bar COLLATE German_PhoneBook_100_CS_AS