Name
NLS_SORT
Synopsis
Value: BINARY or valid language name
Default: derived
Dynamic: ALTER SESSION
Specifies the collating sequence for ORDER BY queries. If the value is BINARY, the collating sequence for ORDER BY queries is based on the numeric value of characters (a binary sort that requires less system overhead).
If the value is a named language, sorting is based on the order of the defined linguistic sort. The default value of this parameter depends on the value of the NLS_LANGUAGE parameter. The NLS_SORT operator must be used with comparison operations if the linguistic sort behavior is desired.
Setting NLS_SORT to anything other than BINARY causes a sort to use a full table scan, regardless of the path chosen by the optimizer.
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