Thanks for help!

> I still don't understand why you allways have to specify the
> characterset, defaulting to the charset a database is in when not
> specified looks like a very natural option to me.

According to Firebird/InterBase API, if you do not specify charset in
DPB (database parameters buffer), it is defaulted to NONE by database
server. And if you have some non-NONE columns, getting/setting data
there will cause server to perform transliteration. Also I do not
know if there's any way to get database charset before making a
connection.

Best regards,
Roman Rokytskyy