Should we change collations ??? | SQL Server Performance Forums

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Should we change collations ???

Like sql2k, Sql2k5 has "new" default collations at installation time. For what I understood, you could maintain support for the SQL2k en SQL7.0 collations SQL_**, but is it wize to do so ? [?] What would be a good reason to stick to the old collations ? Is there any (performance) impact ? [B)] We tend to keep all collations the same at one server, and if possible at each server with the same software-edition. Up until now we even succeeded in the latter one Is there any advantage in planning a "collation upgrade" during the upgrade/migration process towards SQLServer 2005 ? [?]
Reason to stick with the old ones, you won’t have to convert your database when moving it. Specially if you have procedures that uses temporary tables, temp tables are created (if not defined in the procedure) with the tempdb collation, and if this for some reason is different then your DB it’s a pain. Only performance factor i read about is for the new BIN2 collations, which should be slightly faster to compare.
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/ms143515.aspx If your happy with your current collation in terms of sorting, I would stick with it.

For temp tables, just make sure that you create each collation-sensitive column with COLLATE <your_collation> or COLLATE DATABASE_DEFAULT.
Thnks for your input.
It conferms my point of view, and there is aparently still no "push" to migrate collations except for unicode data.
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