Tips and Tricks for:  SQL Server

The Problem:   The DISTINCT clause is case insensitive

By default the DISTINCT clause is case insensitive, at least on a case inseneitive instance of SQL Server.  I ran into a situation where I was looking for all casings of a particular column, in order to fix them. 

Solution:  The COLLATE clause can make any string operation case sensitive.

The solution turned out to be pretty easy, use a COLLATE clause with a case sensitive collation.  Here's a sample query with both case senstive and case insensitve collations. The data is all in the example, so give them a try.