Re: [SQL] Internationalisation: SELECT str (ignoring Umlauts/Accents)

> >   has anyone done a good implementation of a search algorithm, that would
> > allow searching for a string, with automatic use of alternate forms for
> > Umlauts ('ae' in a search string matches the a-Umlaut ), or allowing to
> > search without knowing the correct accents ( 'a' in a search string also
> > matches 'à', 'e' also matches 'é', ... )?
> >   This should - of course - work one-way only, i.e. if a string in the
> > database contains "ae" and the search string contains the German a-Umlaut,
> > then the string containing ae should not be matched, while the other way
> > around it should.
> I don't know what you exactly looking for : a specific solution, or a
> general one. If this is the second case, you have to take care that
> different languages have different ways for dealing with crippled texts (
> = without accents...).

Oh well, let me extend the question then, what I am looking for is a
solution that works for Switzerland, e.g. a country with 4 official
languages (one of which basically gets ignored) and a 5th "major"
language. So, I need a search function to look for German, French, Italian
and English names (I am not doing Rumantsch [the 4th official language in
Switzerland], as I don't know anything about the language except for that
only a few thousand people in Switzerland are left actually using it).




    Benedikt

Windows 95: n.
    32-bit extensions and a graphical shell for a 16-bit patch to an 8-bit
    operating system originally coded for a 4-bit microprocessor,  written
         by a 2-bit company that can't stand for 1 bit of competition.