What character encoding (Collation) should I use in Mysql?

Question

What is the most appropriate character encoding (Collation) for a Mysql database that will store Portuguese language data?

Answer 1

Both serve: latin1_swedish_ci or utf8_general_ci.

To change the CHARSET and COLLATION of an existing bank:

ALTER DATABASE `sua_base` CHARSET = Latin1 COLLATE = latin1_swedish_ci;

or

ALTER DATABASE `sua_base` CHARSET = UTF8 COLLATE = utf8_general_ci;

Explanation

CHARSET and COLLATE are different things, in Mysql, each CHARSET has Collates, each with its own particularity.

• latin1_general_ci: There is no distinction between upper and lower case letters. Searching for "test", records such as "Test" or "TEST" will be returned.
• latin1_general_cs: Distinguishes upper and lower case letters. Searching for "test" will only return "test". Options such as "Test" and "TEST" will not be returned.
• latin1_swedish_ci: It does not distinguish lowercase and uppercase letters or accented characters with cedilla, that is, the record containing the word "Intuition" will be returned when there is a search for the word "intúicao"

Source

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(edited in 2019)

The universal standard is UTF-8, even more in Brazil, where it is "standard of fact and by law".

Thus the first option (with distinction) is utf8_swedish_ci,

ALTER DATABASE `sua_base` CHARSET = Latin1 COLLATE = utf8_swedish_ci;

and the second (without distinction) utf8_general_ci.