#Collate copies meaning code

Without _SC at the end (or _140_ in the middle), built-in functions don't see a single supplementary character, but instead see two meaningless code points that make up the surrogate pair. The 'support' only affects how the built-in functions interpret surrogate pairs (which are how supplementary characters are encoded in UTF-16).

_SC at the end means 'Supplementary Character support'.

VSS = variation selector sensitive (only available in the version 140 collations) or missing = variation selector insensitive.

WS = width-sensitive or missing = width insensitive.

KS = Kana type-sensitive or missing = Kana type-insensitive.

AS = accent-sensitive or AI = accent-insensitive.

CS = case-sensitive or CI = case-insensitive.

Next you have the sensitivities, that can be in any combination of the following, but always specified in this order:.

So, those endings exist for version 90 and 100 collations, but only starting in SQL Server 2012. I said 'for the most part' because the collations ending in _SC were introduced in SQL Server 2012 (version 11.0), but the underlying data wasn't new, they merely added support for supplementary characters for the built-in functions. There are some that are 90 (for SQL Server 2005, which is version 9.0), most are 100 (for SQL Server 2008, version 10.0), and a small set has 140 (for SQL Server 2017, version 14.0). Not all versions of SQL Server come with new collations, so there are gaps in the version numbers.

#Collate copies meaning windows

Windows collations with no version number in the name are version 80 (meaning SQL Server 2000 as that is version 8.0). The COLLATE, while not present in all collation names, refers to the SQL Server version in which the collation was introduced (for the most part). If 'What does COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS do?' means 'What does the COLLATE clause of CREATE DATABASE do?', then: BUT, the comparison rules defined by the chosen Collation are used in many places outside of user queries against user data. Yes, at the most basic level Collation handles sorting. Please be aware that the accepted answer is a bit incomplete.