> What troubles me is that you allways need to specify your character
> set, why doesn't the driver find out in which characterset the
> database is and switch to it? How can one make a Java application
> that is supposed to talk to multiple databases and has to be
> transportable?

Not always. Charset is automatically selected using your
file.encoding property. Probably, in the nearest future I will switch
it to "NONE" as default encoding.

Database charset should not be used as the default (also I doubt that
it is possible) because there might be situation when this would not
be acceptable (default DB charset is NONE, but some fields are
defined with non-NONE chaset, then you get transliteration problems).

> I'm also troubled by the fact that I don't see how to set the
> characterset using a database URL instead of a properties object.
> Any information on that?

No chance. Currently properties encoded in URL are not supported. If
you wish you can add this feature to your code, and I will commit it
to main tree if everything is ok.

Best regards,
Roman Rokytskyy