MySQL 5.7 Reference Manual Including MySQL NDB Cluster 7.5 and NDB Cluster 7.6
MySQL includes character set support that enables you to store data
using a variety of character sets and perform comparisons according
to a variety of collations. The default MySQL server character set
and collation are latin1 and
latin1_swedish_ci, but you can specify character
sets at the server, database, table, column, and string literal
levels.
This chapter discusses the following topics:
What are character sets and collations?
The multiple-level default system for character set assignment.
Syntax for specifying character sets and collations.
Affected functions and operations.
Unicode support.
The character sets and collations that are available, with notes.
Selecting the language for error messages.
Selecting the locale for day and month names.
Character set issues affect not only data storage, but also
communication between client programs and the MySQL server. If you
want the client program to communicate with the server using a
character set different from the default, you'll need to indicate
which one. For example, to use the utf8 Unicode
character set, issue this statement after connecting to the server:
SET NAMES 'utf8';
For more information about configuring character sets for application use and character set-related issues in client/server communication, see Section 10.5, “Configuring Application Character Set and Collation”, and Section 10.4, “Connection Character Sets and Collations”.