Sorting query result while ignoring accents in Vertica

Question

I'm running a rather simple query to select the content of a table in Vertica 7.1 and I have a question concerning the sorting at the end. You see, the table displays various health services in french... so naturally I happen to have some accented characters. For example, suppose I have the following data in my table and run the query written immediately after:

//This is some sample data

Électrocardiogramme
Radiographie
Anesthésie
Équipement divers
Massothérapie
Encéphalogramme

//This is the query I run
select * from myTable order by Description

This is what I currently end up with:

Anesthésie
Encéphalogramme
Massothérapie
Radiographie
Électrocardiogramme
Équipement divers

As you can see, the accented characters throw the sorting off in such a way that the "É" all appear at the end of the list. Now I understand the logic behind it all since in the UTF-8 table "E" and "É" are two different characters and all accented characters technically appear "after" normal letters, thus the result presented above.

However, in my case, I'd like the result to be presented this way:

Anesthésie
Électrocardiogramme
Encéphalogramme
Équipement divers
Massothérapie
Radiographie

Basically, I'd like Vertica to treat the accented character as its unaccented counterpart. Is there a way to do that without altering the data contained in the table?

Answer 1

What you can do to order them better is using the function :

-use the colation funtion

COLLATION ( 'expression' [ , 'locale_or_collation_name' ] )

or (not as clean)

select * from table 
order by replace(replace(replace(replace(replace(replace(replace(replace(replace(replace(replace(replace(replace(replace(replace(replace(replace(replace(replace(replace(replace(replace(replace(replace(replace(replace(replace(replace(replace(replace(Description, 'é', 'e'), 'è', 'e'),'ê', 'e'), 'ë', 'e'), 'è', 'e'), 'ï','i'), 'î', 'i'), 'ô', 'o'), 'œ','oe'), 'à', 'a'), 'â', 'a'), 'ù', 'u'), 'û', 'u'), 'ü', 'u'), 'ÿ', 'y'), 'É', 'E'), 'È', 'E'),'Ê', 'E'), 'Ë', 'E'), 'Ë', 'E'), 'Ï','I'), 'Î', 'I'), 'Ô', 'O'), 'Œ','OE'), 'À', 'A'), 'Â', 'A'), 'Ù', 'U'), 'Û', 'U'), 'Ü', 'U'), 'Ÿ', 'Y')

• this will end-up doing the job but you have to embed any other accent options.

Answer 2

You are looking to change the COLLATION for the sort order. Based on the descriptions, I'm assuming French. You can find the full list of choices for collation names or locales here.

SELECT * FROM myTable ORDER BY COLLATION(Description,'FRA')