server/db encoding (mix) issues

Hello,

we have a mix of older software still using LATIN1 as db encoding and the psqlODBC-drivers (ANSI) and newer software using UTF8 as db encoding. As running two server instances would use up more resources(?) than just one we'd like to have all dbs in one cluster. Which cons against this solution are there? Which operating system locale should be used then? C locale is recommended in the docs - also because of better performance. However, the language of the software is not English but German - so shouldn't there be problems with sorting German Umlauts etc. correctly etc.? Which encoding should the server have - UTF8/Unicode or LATIN1? BTW which is the correct locale for LATIN1 and German (de_DE (my guess) or de_DE(at)euro (which seems to be for LATIN9)). Using SQL_ASCII doesn't seem to be a wise choice. Are there no problems when connecting with psqlODBC-ANSI drivers if the server encoding is UTF8/Unicode? I'd be happy if you could enlighten me a bit.

Thank you very much,

Peter
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