title: PostgreSQL COLLATE and Character Type - Values to use in a RDS Service hosted in Australia
body: <p>We are using Aurora RDS PostgreSQL database in AWS Sydney (ap-southeast-2)</p>
  <p>The application requires an UTF-8 encoding.</p>
  <p>What should the Collation and character types be?</p>
  <pre><code>LC_COLLATE=&quot;en_AU.UTF-8&quot;
  LC_CTYPE=&quot;en_AU.UTF-8&quot;
  </code></pre>
  <p>Does using <strong>en_US.UTF-8</strong> instead of <em>en_AU.UTF-8</em> have any impact?</p>
  <p>I am unable to come to a conclusion based on my searches so far.</p>
  <p>The default value when I work with the AWS console (for RDS) is en_US. Based on this I am guessing that it should be good however would like to hear from experts on any potential issues/pitfalls here.</p>
  <p>There are a few questions that talk about differences between C.UTF-8 and en_US.UTF-8 but I can't see any queries/answers between en_US.UTF-8 and en_AU.UTF-8.</p>
  <p>Some of the Q&amp;As in this space that I tried to get some insights are listed here for quick reference:</p>
  <p><a href="https://dba.stackexchange.com/questions/46408/how-to-choose-a-collation-for-international-database">https://dba.stackexchange.com/questions/46408/how-to-choose-a-collation-for-international-database</a></p>
  <p><a href="https://dba.stackexchange.com/questions/240930/postgresql-difference-between-collations-c-and-c-utf-8">https://dba.stackexchange.com/questions/240930/postgresql-difference-between-collations-c-and-c-utf-8</a></p>
  <p><a href="https://dba.stackexchange.com/questions/211544/postgres-encoding-collation-and-ctype">https://dba.stackexchange.com/questions/211544/postgres-encoding-collation-and-ctype</a></p>
  <p><strong>Note:</strong> Cross posted this in <a href="https://dba.stackexchange.com/questions/271831/postgresql-collate-and-character-type-values-to-use-in-a-rds-service-hosted-in">DBA Stack exchange.</a></p>