Re: [HACKERS] Troubles using German Umlauts with JDBC

I can add something if people agree there is an issue here.

> I've added a new section "Character encoding" to
> http://lab.applinet.nl/postgresql-jdbc/, based on the
> information from Dave and Barry.
>
> I haven't seen a confirmation from pgsql-hackers or Bruce yet
> that this issue will be added to the Todo list. I'm under the
> impression that the backend developers don't see this as a
> problem.
>
> Regards,
> Ren? Pijlman
>
> On Tue, 04 Sep 2001 10:40:36 -0700, Barry Lind wrote:
> >I would like to add one additional comment.  In current sources the jdbc
> >driver detects (through a hack) that the server doesn't have multibyte
> >enabled and then ignores the SQL_ASCII return value and defaults to the
> >JVM's character set instead of using SQL_ASCII.
> >
> >The problem boils down to the fact that without multibyte enabled, the
> >server has know way of specifiying which 8bit character set is being
> >used for a particular database.  Thus a client like JDBC doesn't know
> >what character set to use when converting to UNICODE.  Thus the best we
> >can do in JDBC is use our best guess (JVM character set is probably the
> >best default), and allow the user to explicitly specify something else
> >if necessary.
> >
> >thanks,
> >--Barry
> >
> >Rene Pijlman wrote:
> >> [forwarding to pgsql-hackers and Bruce as Todo list maintainer,
> >> see comment below]
> >>
> >> [insert with JDBC converts Latin-1 umlaut to ?]
> >> On 04 Sep 2001 09:54:27 -0400, Dave Cramer wrote:
> >>
> >>>You have to set the encoding when you make the connection.
> >>>
> >>>Properties props = new Properties();
> >>>props.put("user",user);
> >>>props.put("password",password);
> >>>props.put("charSet",encoding);
> >>>Connection con = DriverManager.getConnection(url,props);
> >>>where encoding is the proper encoding for your database
> >>>
> >>
> >> For completeness, I quote the answer Barry Lind gave yesterday.
> >>
> >> "[the driver] asks the server what character set is being used
> >> for the database.  Unfortunatly the server only knows about
> >> character sets if multibyte support is compiled in. If the
> >> server is compiled without multibyte, then it always reports to
> >> the client that the character set is SQL_ASCII (where SQL_ASCII
> >> is 7bit ascii).  Thus if you don't have multibyte enabled on the
> >> server you can't support 8bit characters through the jdbc
> >> driver, unless you specifically tell the connection what
> >> character set to use (i.e. override the default obtained from
> >> the server)."
> >>
> >> This really is confusing and I think PostgreSQL should be able
> >> to support single byte encoding conversions without enabling
> >> multi-byte.
> >>
> >> To the very least there should be a --enable-encoding-conversion
> >> or something similar, even if it just enables the current
> >> multibyte support.
> >>
> >> Bruce, can this be put on the TODO list one way or the other?
> >> This problem has appeared 4 times in two months or so on the
> >> JDBC list.
> >>
> >> Regards,
> >> Ren? Pijlman <rene@lab.applinet.nl>
>
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