PostgreSQL

51.12. `pg_collation`
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51.12. `pg_collation`

The catalog pg_collation describes the available collations, which are essentially mappings from an SQL name to operating system locale categories. See Section 23.2 for more information.

Table 51.12. pg_collation Columns

Name Type References Description

Name	Type	References	Description
`oid`	`oid`		Row identifier
`collname`	`name`		Collation name (unique per namespace and encoding)
`collnamespace`	`oid`	`pg_namespace.oid`	The OID of the namespace that contains this collation
`collowner`	`oid`	`pg_authid.oid`	Owner of the collation
`collprovider`	`char`		Provider of the collation: `d` = database default, `c` = libc, `i` = icu
`collisdeterministic`	`bool`		Is the collation deterministic?
`collencoding`	`int4`		Encoding in which the collation is applicable, or -1 if it works for any encoding
`collcollate`	`name`		`LC_COLLATE` for this collation object
`collctype`	`name`		`LC_CTYPE` for this collation object
`collversion`	`text`		Provider-specific version of the collation. This is recorded when the collation is created and then checked when it is used, to detect changes in the collation definition that could lead to data corruption.

oid

Row identifier

collname

name

Collation name (unique per namespace and encoding)

collnamespace

oid

pg_namespace.oid

The OID of the namespace that contains this collation

collowner

oid

pg_authid.oid

Owner of the collation

collprovider

char

Provider of the collation: d = database default, c = libc, i = icu

collisdeterministic

bool

Is the collation deterministic?

collencoding

int4

Encoding in which the collation is applicable, or -1 if it works for any encoding

collcollate

name

LC_COLLATE for this collation object

collctype

name

LC_CTYPE for this collation object

collversion

text

Provider-specific version of the collation. This is recorded when the collation is created and then checked when it is used, to detect changes in the collation definition that could lead to data corruption.

Note that the unique key on this catalog is (collname, collencoding, collnamespace) not just (collname, collnamespace). PostgreSQL generally ignores all collations that do not have collencoding equal to either the current database’s encoding or -1, and creation of new entries with the same name as an entry with collencoding = -1 is forbidden. Therefore it is sufficient to use a qualified SQL name (`schema.name`) to identify a collation, even though this is not unique according to the catalog definition. The reason for defining the catalog this way is that initdb fills it in at cluster initialization time with entries for all locales available on the system, so it must be able to hold entries for all encodings that might ever be used in the cluster.

In the template0 database, it could be useful to create collations whose encoding does not match the database encoding, since they could match the encodings of databases later cloned from template0. This would currently have to be done manually.

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51.12. pg_collation

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51.12. `pg_collation`