The default collation of a database comes from the server if you are not using the COLLATE clause in the CREATE DATABASE statement. If you are not using the COLLATE clause for character string column, it will use the default collation from the database. Using this logic, you can find out the default collation in a database or server very easily. See the following tutorial exercise:

CREATE DATABASE GlobalGuideLineDatabase

GO

CREATE TABLE faq (Name VARCHAR(80))

GO

SP_HELP FAQ

GO

Column_name ... Collation

Name ... SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS

Now we know that the default collation for SQL Server 2005 is SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS.