Question

I have a SQL Server 2005 database. It was created with default collation which is not case-sensitive (my fault!). That’s different from all other databases which I work with, where collations are by default case sensitive. I mostly consider comparing strings than sorting. I use Linq-to-SQL where there is no way to specify collation for WHERE clause.

It seems that changing collation of existing database / server (and all tables’ fields!) is error-prone and there is no tools for this.

Maybe I’m missing something and there is a clean way?

Answer 1

try this:

Setup /QUIET /ACTION=REBUILDDATABASE /INSTANCENAME=InstanceName 
/SQLSYSADMINACCOUNTS=accounts /[ SAPWD= StrongPassword ] 
/SQLCOLLATION=CollationName

Run this comman through SQL command promt and then rebuild the master database.

For specific DB

USE master;
GO
ALTER DATABASE yourDBname
COLLATE French_CI_AS ;
GO