T-SQL match special characters. Pre should match Pré

Question

I have a list of company names and the user has to enter his company name to get into the system. Let's say we have the company "Pré ABC", now I want the user to be able to type "Pre" or "Pré".

First I thought this was build-in functionality of the LIKE statement, but unfortunately it isn't. Any thoughts?

Answer 1

This has to do with collation. Each database has its own collation (and any column can override that collation, too). In your case, you're looking for a collation that's not accent-sensitive, and not case-sensitive. Try configuring the database to "SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AI". That decodes as "code page 1, case-insensitive, accent-insensitive", which should make your queries work as desired.

Answer 2

SELECT  1
WHERE   N'Pré ABC' COLLATE LATIN1_GENERAL_CI_AI LIKE N'%Pre%'