class FoodItem(models.Model)
  	name = models.CharField(max_length=255)
  	sort_name = models.CharField(max_length=255, blank=True)
	
	def save(self):
		if self.name:
        	        self.name = self.name.strip()
			self.sort_name = self.name.lower()
                else:
			self.sort_name = ''
			
		super(FoodItem, self).save()
		

Then the ordering would be:

l = FoodItem.objects.all().order_by(‘sort_name’)

Class A(models.Model):
name = models.CharField(max_length = 50)
…..

Class B(models.Model):
a = models.ForeignKey(A)
…..

Now i want to order the all “b” objects based on “a__name”. Is this is possible?
Can any one help me.

‘AAA’ false in collations where sort order is like aaa AAA bbb BBB … (dictionary sort order)
‘AAA’ true in collations where sort order is like AAA … ZZZ aaa … ZZZ (binary)

It is VERY important to be able to override ANY operator to a given collation. In my experience, most databases do allow this.

for example:

‘AAA’ < 'aaa' collate SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CS_AS
CS = case sensitive
AS = accent sensitive

'AAA' < 'aaa' collate SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS
CI = case insensitive
AS = accent sensitive

or Oracle's nls_sort() for example.

Also, these databases can be told what collation to use at various levels including per db/table/statement so on.

I find this VITALLY important. So postgreSQL, I suggest very strongly that you do work on this.
Depending on LC_XXX is okay for default, but you must be able to override as far down as to the:

= = != operators
sort by clauses
like operations
so on…

Check out Oracle, SQL Server, MySql, so on… they all have it.

Cheers,
Ron Lentjes
LC CLS

It might be helpful also to know that Wikipedia moved the page you linked to about different SQL dialects. The new page is:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/SQL_Dialects_Reference/Functions_and_expressions/String_functions

It looks like the syntax is ok unless for some reason we want to switch to Virtuoso =)

This is easily the biggest wart in this otherwise wonderful RDBMS and I WISH they’d stop pretending they support collations. For all intents and purposes, they don’t.