Re: [ADMIN] what's the efficient/safest way to convert database character set ?

On 10/17/2013 10:51 PM, Huang, Suya wrote:
> Question: How can I pull out the real character set information from the database? does it rely on the understanding
ofbusiness knowledge? 


what did you store in it?   because its declared SQL_ASCII, postgres
doesn't know, its all just bytes.   you could have stored standard 7 bit
USASCII, or you could have stored ISO-8859-1 (-2, -3,...), or you could
have stored one of the myriad non-UTF Asian multibyte character
codes.    postgres doesn't know or care what you put in there, and it
doesn't check to ensure its valid.

IF all your data is in a consistent encoding, and you specify that
encoding on the pg_dump command, then the psql command should be able to
restore it as-is to the new UTF8 database via the magic of
client_encoding.    if the data is not consistent, you'll have a much
harder time.





--
john r pierce                                      37N 122W
somewhere on the middle of the left coast