  This work reports radiative transition rates and electron impact excitation
rate coefficients for levels of the n= 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 configurations of Ca
II. The radiative data were computed using the Thomas-Fermi-Dirac central
potential method in the frozen core approximation and includes the polarization
interaction between the valence electron and the core using a model potential.
This method allows for configuration interactions (CI) and relativistic effects
in the Breit-Pauli formalism. Collision strengths in LS-coupling were
calculated in the close coupling approximation with the R-matrix method. Then,
fine structure collision strengths were obtained by means of the
intermediate-coupling frame transformation (ICFT) method which accounts for
spin-orbit coupling effects. We present extensive comparisons with the most
recent calculations and measurements for Ca II as well as a comparison between
the core polarization results and the "unpolarized" values. We find that core
polarization affects the computed lifetimes by up to 20%. Our results are in
very close agreement with recent measurements for the lifetimes of metastable
levels. The present collision strengths were integrated over a Maxwellian
distribution of electron energies and the resulting effective collision
strengths are given for a wide range of temperatures. Our effective collision
strengths for the resonance transitions are within ~11% from previous values
derived from experimental measurements, but disagree with latter computations
using the distorted wave approximation.
