Re: converting databases form SQL_ASCII to UTF8 - Mailing list pgsql-general

From Jasen Betts
Subject Re: converting databases form SQL_ASCII to UTF8
Date
Msg-id ipouia$83r$2@reversiblemaps.ath.cx
Whole thread Raw
In response to converting databases form SQL_ASCII to UTF8  (Geoffrey Myers <lists@serioustechnology.com>)
Responses Re: converting databases form SQL_ASCII to UTF8  (Geoffrey Myers <lists@serioustechnology.com>)
List pgsql-general
On 2011-04-22, Geoffrey Myers <geof@serioustechnology.com> wrote:
> Vick Khera wrote:
>> On Fri, Apr 22, 2011 at 11:00 AM, Geoffrey Myers
>> <lists@serioustechnology.com <mailto:lists@serioustechnology.com>> wrote:
>>
>>     Here's our problem.  We planned on moving databases a few at a time.
>>     Problem is, there is a process that pushes data from one database to
>>     another.  If this process attempts to push data from a SQL_ASCII
>>     database to a new UTF8 database and it has one of these characters
>>     mentioned above, the process fails.
>>
>>
>> The database's enforcement of the encoding should be the last layer that
>> does so.  Your applications should be enforcing strict utf-8 encoding
>> from start to finish.  Once this is done, and the old data already in
>> the DB is properly encoded as utf-8, then there should be no problems
>> switching on the utf-8 encoding in postgres to get that final layer of
>> verification.
>
> Totally agree.  Still, the question remains, why not leave it as SQL_ASCII?

perhaps you want sorted output in some locale other than 'C'?
or maybe want to take a substring in the database...

utf8 in SQL-ASCII is just a string of octets

utf8 in a utf8 database is a string of unicode characters.

--
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