General search rules for the German language

In the base configuration on Oracle, Guidewire provides specialized search algorithms specifically for the German language. Guidewire sets these rules through the use of a configurable Java class that it exposes as a CDATA element in collations.xml.

This Java class provides the following behavior for searching in a German-language database:

Search case	Rule
Vowels with umlauts	All searches in German compare as equal a vowel with an umlaut or the same vowel without the umlaut but followed by the letter e. Thus, all searches in German explicitly treat the following as the same value: ä and ae ö and oe ü and ue
German letter Eszett	All searches in German treat the Eszett character ß (also known as Sharp-S) the same as the characters ss.

Search case

Rule

Vowels with umlauts

All searches in German compare as equal a vowel with an umlaut or the same vowel without the umlaut but followed by the letter e. Thus, all searches in German explicitly treat the following as the same value:

ä and ae
ö and oe
ü and ue

German letter Eszett

All searches in German treat the Eszett character ß (also known as Sharp-S) the same as the characters ss.