• This problem is excaserbated by 'part-time' DBAs in the UK blindly installing SQL Server with defualts without referring to the regional settings of the server which influence the default collation of the sql server. The UK default is the Windows collation introduced with SQL 2000 which according to microsoft gives performance benifits as it matches that of the OS. I have no idea why the US defaults to a collation that was supposed to be only there for backwards compatability.