> Driver configuration seems to be ok. Ensure that you get correct

UTF-8

> strings from the web container. Note, new String(italian.getBytes

())

> in your configuration will replace all accented chars with '?', so

if

> such code is somewhere in the application, it will corrupt

characters.

No such code exists in my application. I'm sure that the characters
are correctly stored inside the application (in JVM that is).

> You can modify default encoding for the VM by specifying
> -Dfile.encoding=XXXX (UTF-8/Cp125X/ISO8859-X).

My JVM file.encoding is set to 8859_7 but that should no matter to
the driver. I explicitly set JDBC driver to UNICODE_FSS and my
database is created with UNICODE_FSS. (I do not want to change
default encoding since I have some web apps that use 8859_7 dbms and
other that I want to run on UTF-8)

My assumption right now is that the driver encodes the query string
I provide, in the the default encoding of the JVM which I believe is
a mistake.

This is a link to a diagram depicting the situation :
http://www.softways.gr/images/encoding.gif