Character Sets

Overview

Character sets define which characters can be used to store information in a database.

  • Character sets allow users to store characters from many different languages in the database

  • Some character sets support special characters like currency symbols, mathematical symbols, musical symbols, and emoji

  • MariaDB SkySQL supports many character sets

  • Character set support is product-specific

Supported Character Sets

For the full list of supported character sets, see:

Using Character Sets

Character sets are configured independently on the server and the client. The server and the client should typically use the same character set, otherwise there can be corruption or loss of data.

For details on how to use character sets, choose a product: