SQL Server's SoundEx function on non-Latin character sets?

Question

Does SQL Server's (2000) Soundex function work on Asian character sets? I used it in a query and it appears to have not worked properly but I realize that it could be because I don't know how to read Chinese...

Furthermore, are there any other languages where the function might have trouble working on? (Russian for example)

Thank you,
Frank

Answer 1

Soundex is fairly specific to English - it may or may not work well on other languages. One example that happened in New Zealand was an attempt at patient name matching using Soundex. Unfortunately pacific island names did not work well with Soundex, in many cases hashing to the same small set of values. A different algorithm had to be used.

Your mileage may vary. On more recent versions of SQL Server you could write a CLR function to do some other computation.

Answer 2

By design it works best on English sentences using the ASCII character set. I have used it on a project in Romania where I replaced the Romanian special characters with corresponding ASCII characters that sound more or less the same. It is not perfect but in my case it was a lot better than nothing.

I think you will have no great success with applying SOUNDEX on Asian character sets.