Re: [ADMIN] what's the efficient/safest way to convert database character set ?

On 10/17/2013 3:13 PM, Huang, Suya wrote:
> I’ve got a question of converting database from ascii to UTF-8, what’s
> the best approach to do so if the database size is very large?
> Detailed procedure or experience sharing are much appreciated!

I believe you will need to dump the whole database, and import it into a
new database that uses UTF8 encoding. Ss far as I know, there's no way
to convert encoding in place. As the other gentlemen pointed out, you
also will have to convert/sanitize all text data, as your current
SQL_ASCII fields could easily contain stuff that's not valid UTF8.

for large databases, this is a major undertaking. I find its often
easiest to do a major change like this between the old and a new
database server.

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john r pierce 37N 122W
somewhere on the middle of the left coast