Hi Bonnie

The reason is that the data is being imported from a VFP app that uses a type of Base80 character keys so it mixes upper and lower case letters. I did not want to have write a special program to go through the 300mb of data to change all this so the simplest solution is to make the key field case-sensitive.

Thanks
Simon


>Simon,
>
>This doesn't answer your question about *how* to change the Collation (as Jon has already answered that question for you), but I'm just wondering *why* you want case sensitivity on keys? I typically use numeric keys, but if I had a character key, I don't think I'd want "BONNIE" and "Bonnie" to be seen as two different records! IMHO, they should equate to the same key.
>
>~~Bonnie
>
>
>>Hi
>>
>>I was wondering what is the preferred setting for SQL-Server collation. The first time I installed it I accepted the default settings only to discover that SQL-Server rejected some of my data complaining about duplicate key values. I then discovered that it was treating the key values as case-insensative.
>>
>>So then I installed it setting the collation to binary only to discover that now I had to be careful to match the case on table and field names etc. Now I am wondering what is the best practice for collation.
>>
>>I also wondered what the syntax was for setting the collation on an individual field when you create the table. I am thinking that the only place I want case sensitive collation is on my key field. I know I can use the Enterprise Manager to manually set the collation on individual fields but I would prefer to do it as part of "Create Table - SQL".
>>
>>As you can see I am new to SQL-Server and .Net and I am having "lots of fun" learning all the differences that I took for granted in VFP.
>>
>>Thanks
>>Simon White