title: Oracle database order by Polish characters
body: <p>I have problem with sorting elements by varchar containing Polish characters like ą, Ą.</p>
  
  <p>For example, we have following names:</p>
  
  <pre><code>Aaaa
  BBcvx
  Ąccc
  Ddde
  ądcc
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Following query:</p>
  
  <pre><code>select * from something order by lower(name);
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Returns result as this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>Aaaa
  BBcvx
  Ddde
  ądcc
  Ąccc
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>As you can see, polish characters are ignored and put at the end. It should be:</p>
  
  <pre><code>Aaaa
  ądcc
  Ąccc
  BBcvx
  Ddde
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>What might be the problem? Database encoding? Mine is:</p>
  
  <pre><code>SELECT * FROM NLS_DATABASE_PARAMETERS WHERE PARAMETER = 'NLS_CHARACTERSET';
  
  Result:
  EE8MSWIN1250
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Can this be fixed without changing database encoding?</p>