Common Character Encodings in MySQL
The MySQL supports a wide range of character encodings each catering to the different language and character requirements. Some of the common character encodings include:
- UTF-8: UTF-8 is the most widely used encoding and supports almost all characters in the Unicode standard. It is backward-compatible with ASCII and can represent any character in the Unicode character set.
- Latin1 (ISO-8859-1): Latin1 is a single-byte encoding that supports Western European languages. It is compatible with the ASCII character set and includes characters such as accented letters and special symbols.
- UTF-16: UTF-16 is a variable-length encoding capable of representing all Unicode characters. It uses two bytes for most characters but can use four bytes for the characters outside the Basic Multilingual Plane (BMP).
- UTF-32: UTF-32 is a fixed-length encoding that uses four bytes for each character. It can represent all Unicode characters but is less commonly used due to its larger storage requirements.
Introduction to MySQL Character Encoding
Character encoding is a fundamental aspect of any database system including MySQL. It determines how characters are represented internally and how they’re stored and processed by the database. In this article, we’ll explore the concept of character encoding in MySQL its importance, and the common encoding schemes used.
Contact Us