Character Sets and Collations

Simply put, a character set defines how and which characters are stored to support a particular language or languages. A collation, on the other hand, defines the order used when comparing strings (i.e. the position of any given character within the alphabet of that language)

Title Description
Character Set and Collation Overview Introduction to character sets and collations.
Supported Character Sets and Collations MariaDB supports the following character sets and collations.
Setting Character Sets and Collations Changing from the default character set and collation.
Unicode Unicode support.
SHOW CHARACTER SET Available character sets.
SHOW COLLATION Supported collations.
Information Schema CHARACTER_SETS Table Supported character sets.
Information Schema COLLATIONS Table Supported collations.
Internationalization and Localization Character sets, collations, time zones and locales.
SET CHARACTER SET Maps all strings sent between the current client and the server with the given mapping.
SET NAMES The character set used to send statements to the server, and results back to the client.
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https://mariadb.com/kb/en/character-sets/