Different languages use different collation sequences, and you can alter your system collation to ensure that the ORDER BY clauses you specify in your queries sort correctly.
You can specify the default collation for a user using the CREATE USER or MODIFY USER statement, or you can specify collation for the duration of a session using the SET SESSION COLLATION statement. Otherwise, collation for a session is determined by the logon client system. The direction of the sort can be controlled by including the DESC (descending) or ASC (ascending) sort option in the SQL request.
Vantage supports ASCII, EBCDIC, and MULTINATIONAL collating sequences. If MULTINATIONAL is in effect, your collation is one of the European (diacritical) or Kanji sort sequences described in International Sort Orders.
The following topics explain the results of ORDER BY as affected by whether character string expressions have the CASESPECIFIC or NOTCASESPECIFIC attribute.