The collating sequence is the sequence of the data if it is sorted in ascending or descending order. This is important if you are testing for a range of numbers (<, =, >).

PCs and PC-servers store characters in the ASCII format. Mainframe computers store characters in the EBCDIC format.

Regardless of how the data is stored internally, it is normally displayed graphically as a single character as shown under the EBCDIC or ASCII columns.

These characters can be converted to either a two-digit hexadecimal number (HEX 00-FF), or a three-digit decimal number (DEC 0-255) for further analysis and manipulation.

Note: SQL Server 2005 allows a collating sequence choice at time of installation.