To change the encoding of your database:
- Create a new database with different encoding and name
- ex: new bank (ISO-8859-1)
- Create a dump from your current database
- Restore the dump to the new bank, created in step 1
- Test if your application runs correctly with the new database
- Rename the old database
- ex: banco_application (UTF-8) for old banco_application (UTF-8)
- Rename the new database with the old database name
- ex: new bank (ISO-8859-1) for bank application (ISO-8859-1)
- Test the application again
In case of emergency, simply remove the new bank and rename the old one
ex: old bank (UTF-8) for bank_application (UTF-8)