Hi Matt, You need to worry about consistent collations if you want consistent behavior for sorting and comparing fields. That sounds pretty important to me.
Note that latin1 can hold accented characters as well. Regards, Gavin Towey -----Original Message----- From: Matt Neimeyer [mailto:m...@neimeyer.org] Sent: Friday, August 14, 2009 9:52 AM To: mysql@lists.mysql.com Subject: Picking Collation Confusion First off... I've read chapter 9.1.3 on character sets and collations and I'm still confused... :) (that could just be because today is Friday) Our application is installed at several different sites some running on Mac OS, some Windows and a few Linux which I suspect is what led to this situation. To deploy our app we basically do the following... 1. "create and test" 2. (on test server) mysqldump > export.sql 3. (on deployment server) mysql < export.sql Now I need to move a set of changes from the test server to the deployment server and I'm using mysqldiff to find the differences. I've noticed that 90% of the changes are simply to align the collation of fields and default collations for tables. Usually it's bouncing between utf8_general_ci and latin1_swedish_ci. 99.99% of the records in our various customers databases will be "normal" U.S. names and addresses but I know of a few customers that target their base fairly narrowly and might POTENTIALLY need to enter "foreign" names with accents and the like. Ultimately what it comes down to is... how worried should I be about making collations "universal" across at least a given customers instances of the application? (If not all copies of the application for all customers) I already have a routine that I call "normalize database" that makes sure default indexes are applied, etc... so it would be "easy" to add to that routine to check for and "correct" collations but then do I need to worry about existing data? Thanks for the advice! Matt -- MySQL General Mailing List For list archives: http://lists.mysql.com/mysql To unsubscribe: http://lists.mysql.com/mysql?unsub=gto...@ffn.com The information contained in this transmission may contain privileged and confidential information. It is intended only for the use of the person(s) named above. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any review, dissemination, distribution or duplication of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the original message. -- MySQL General Mailing List For list archives: http://lists.mysql.com/mysql To unsubscribe: http://lists.mysql.com/mysql?unsub=arch...@jab.org
