Modifying MULTINATIONAL Collation - Advanced SQL Engine - Teradata Database

International Character Set Support

Product
Advanced SQL Engine
Teradata Database
Release Number
17.05
17.00
Published
June 2020
Language
English (United States)
Last Update
2021-01-23
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dita:id
B035-1125
lifecycle
previous
Product Category
Teradata Vantage™

Modify the following files in the TPA etc or TPA cfg directory:

  • latin1multinationalcb.z
  • latin1multinationalcs.z
  • unicodemultinationalcb.z
  • unicodemultinationalcs.z

Back up these files so that you can restore them, if required.

The latin1 files determine the Standard MULTINATIONAL default collation for LATIN and KANJI1 data, and the unicode files determine the MULTINATIONAL collation for Unicode data.

A site-defined MULTINATIONAL collation overrides the definition in the preceding files. For more information, see Changing the Standard Multinational Default Collation and Defining Your Own Collation Sequence.

The files with suffix cb.z handle case blind (NOT CASESPECIFIC) collation. The files with suffix cs.z handle case specific (CASESPECIFIC) comparison.

Generate the cs.z files first, and then create the cb.z files from copies of the cs.z files. Next, modify the cb.z file so that one of the characters in a case pair matches the weight of the other character in the same case pair. If the files are not properly synchronized, then unpredictable results may ensue.

The format for each file is one character weighting definition per line. The first item is the character to be weighted (in a special hexadecimal Unicode-based format), followed by the primary and secondary weights (also expressed in a special hexadecimal Unicode-based format), which are separated by the semicolon character.

When used as a weight, the line of the file in which the Unicode character first occurs determines the relative weight, earlier characters indicate earlier weights. Forward references are not allowed.

As Unicode is a very large set, it may be best to attempt modifying existing files rather than starting from scratch. Since the startup routine that reads these files is very format sensitive, formatting should be followed precisely.

A % indicates the start of a comment that continues to the end of line. Blank lines and comment only lines are illegal.

Although part of the system, you can also find the collation files (multnatl.txt and blinddef.txt) here:
  1. Access Teradata Vantage™ - Advanced SQL Engine International Character Set Support, B035-1125 at https://docs.teradata.com/.
  2. In the left pane, select Attachments to download the International_Character_Set_Text_Files zip file.
Do not install site-defined MULTINATIONAL collation if you take the file modification approach described here. That way MULTINATIONAL collation is exactly as defined by modified Standard Multinational Default collation files.

After you set up the files and DBC.CollationsV, you must perform a tpareset for the MULTINATIONAL collation changes to take effect.