Michael,

At 02:22 PM 4/07/2004 +0000, Michael Wu wrote:

>Hi,
> I am a new user of Firebird database. I am learning to use this
>database server. In my application, I need to store traditional
>Chinese characters to the varchar columns of several tables. When I
>inserted a string composing of Chinese characters and general
>character to the varchar column, the following exception occured:
>
>
> For my case, could anyone tell me should I specify the character
>set when I create the database and the tables? Should I specify
>encoding in the url connect string too?

As I suggested in private email, you should ask this question in
firebird-support. The issue for the Java client is to connect to the
database using the correct character set parameter (lc_ctype).

However, it won't work until you define your database with the correct
default character set (or define individual character columns with the
correct character set). Firebird-support can help with this.

Also, in firebird-support, it is very likely that people there can advise
you about the best character set to choose to fit your requirements --
provided you describe your requirements!

If you would like to get a full list of the character sets available in
Firebird 1.5, you may download this:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/firebird-support/files/Charsets.pdf

regards
Helen