I have a table like this: tb(ke varchar(10),kc varchar(10),...) where ke contains ascii string while kc contains dbcs string in UTF8. The character_set_server(system,database,client,connection) are all utf8. I have no problem to query the table using "like 'xx%' " against column ke with xx as ascii and get all the dbcs data from the db correctly. But I got nothing back if I do similar query against the kc column with xx as dbcs String (utf8). I do the query through JDBC with useUnicode=true&characterEncoding=UTF-8. mysql is 4.1.1 alpha. Any idea what's the problem ? Thanks a lot