Unicode support with MySQL

Disclaimer

Unicode is supported from MySQL v4.1 but we haven't been able to test this due to the issue with the client version (see below). We provide the information below to assist anyone who wishes to attempt Unicode support, but we have not proven it in use.

Database Version

In order to use Unicode in your MySQL database, you must be using MySQL v4.1 or later.

Client Version

Unicode is not supported by MySQL Connector / MyODBC v3.51. This support is planned for MySQL Connector v5. As at the time of writing (17 November 2005), this version has not yet been released. Consequently we have been unable to test Unicode character access with AQT.

Data Types

Unicode strings are held in columns with the following data types: nchar, nvarchar.

You can also specify a unicode column data types with other syntaxes:

• varchar(200) character set utf8
• varchar(200) unicode

Default Character Sets

You do not need to specify the utf8 character set for your columns, if the default character set for either the table or the database has been set to utf8.

Running SQL Statements with Unicode literals

In MySQL, Unicode literals can be specified in a number of ways:

• prefixed with an N (example: N'ald').
• prefixed with an underscore and the codeset name (example: _utf8 'ald').