# The <collations> element

The `collations` element in the configuration file defines a number of collations that can be preloaded into the configuration. It contains zero or more child `collation` elements as detailed below.

Each `collation` element may have the following attributes:

Attribute | Values | Effect
uri | The collation URI (mandatory) | An absolute URI used to identify the collation in queries and stylesheets
class | Java class implementing Collator, StringCollator, or Comparator | Class used to perform string comparisons
lang | Language code, eg. en-US | Language supported by the collation
rules | Rules in Java RuleBasedCollator format | Detailed rules for ordering of characters
strength | primary|secondary|tertiary|identical | The strength of the collation. A stronger collation takes more details of the character into account, e.g. accents and case
ignore-case | yes|no | Yes indicates that upper-case and lower-case are equivalent
ignore-modifiers | yes|no | Yes indicates that accents and other modifiers are ignored
ignore-symbols | yes|no | Yes indicates that punctuation symbols are ignored (.NET only)
ignore-width | yes|mp | Yes indicates that width variations between characters are ignored
decomposition | none|standard|full | Determines whether Unicode normalization should be applied to strings before comparison (Java platform only)
case-order | upper-first|lower-first|#default | Indicates whether upper-case characters should precede or follow their lower-case equivalents
alphanumeric | yes|no | Yes indicates that a sequence of digits within a string is read as a number, for example "test8.xml" precedes "test10.xml"

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