Re: converting databases form SQL_ASCII to UTF8

On 2011-04-22, Geoffrey Myers <geof(at)serioustechnology(dot)com> wrote:
> Vick Khera wrote:
>> On Fri, Apr 22, 2011 at 11:00 AM, Geoffrey Myers
>> <lists(at)serioustechnology(dot)com <mailto:lists(at)serioustechnology(dot)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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