Re: Migrate postgres databases from SQL_ASCII to UNICODE

From: "Dario V(dot) Fassi" <software(at)sistemat(dot)com(dot)ar>
To: pgsql-admin(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: Re: Migrate postgres databases from SQL_ASCII to UNICODE
Date: 2004-07-17 23:34:14
Message-ID: 40F9B776.9050601@sistemat.com.ar
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Tom Lane wrote:

>"Dario V. Fassi" <software(at)sistemat(dot)com(dot)ar> writes:
>
>
>>A simple question, we need to migrate many (>20) postgres databases from
>>SQL_ASCII encoding to UNICODE encoding, over a 7.3.6 server.
>>
>>
>
>SQL_ASCII is not an encoding (it's more like the absence of knowledge
>about an encoding). What is the data actually stored as?
>
>
>>With Dump/Restore , we get an error (Invalid Unicode) in any field that
>>has a 8 bits character coming from the SQL_ASCII , even setting the
>>client_encoding to WIN, ISO-8859-1, and others encodings.
>>
>>
>
>It might work to just UPDATE pg_database to set datencoding to the
>correct value reflecting what you have actually stored. You might then
>need to REINDEX any indexes on textual columns, but I don't think
>anything else would go wrong.
>
>If you have a mishmash of different encodings in a single database, then
>of course there is no simple solution; you are in for some pain while
>you try to fix the data.
>
>

Yes you are right , the original data come from a DB2 with CodePage
IBM-850 and was inserted without complains in a Postgres 7.3.6 with
SQL_ASCII.

Now we are in a Jail , because IBM-850 , isn't WIN, isn't ISO-xx ,
isn't no one postgresql's encoding.
So when in change via pg_databases the encoding , 8 bits characters
become garbage.
More even if we accept this garbage chars and we set encoding to e.g.
ISO-8859-1 it's impossible go to a UNICODE because this garbage chars
are invalid in client's encoding , so they are reject (in translation
process as invalid unicode chars).

We are in a big problem, and the only way out I can imagine is fix the
data by hand :-! .

Dario,

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