Database Reference
In-Depth Information
In MariaDB there is not much to worry about during regular database activity
(
SELECT
,
INSERT
, and so forth). Rather, the decision as to which character set
and collation to use occurs at the server, database, and table level.
Collation Sequences
MariaDB supports a vast number of character sets. To see the complete list of
supported character sets, use this statement:
▼
Input
SHOW CHARACTER SET;
▼
Analysis
This statement displays all available character sets, along with the description
and default collation for each.
To see the complete list of supported collations, use this statement:
▼
Input
SHOW COLLATION;
▼
Analysis
This statement displays all available collations, along with the character sets to
which they apply. Notice that several character sets have more than one col-
lation.
latin1
, for example, has several for different European languages, and
many appear twice, once case sensitive (designated by
_cs
) and once not case
sensitive (designated by
_ci
).
A default character set and collation are defined (usually by the system admin-
istration at installation time). In addition, when databases are created, default
character sets and collations may be specified too. To determine the character
sets and collations in use, use these statements:
▼
Input
SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'character%';
SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'collation%';
In practice, character sets can seldom be serverwide (or even databasewide) set-
tings. Different tables, and even different columns, may require different char-
acter sets, and so both may be specified when a table is created.
