> Afaik, java uses utf-8 internally only.

UTF-16.

> I see firebird 1.5 does not really have an option for that.

UNICODE_FSS was equal to UTF-8 in Firebird 1.5. The main difference is that
Firebird's 2.0 UTF-8 can take up to 4 bytes per character, while
UNICODE_FSS - up to 3 bytes per char and is there only for compatibility
reasons.

> What server version? 2.0rc, I suspect.

I'd wait a bit - there have been bugfixes after RC1 release already at least
in Services API handling.

> What jaybird version? 2.0.1, I suspect.

I'd say 2.1 - all previous versions won't work correctly with Services API
(more correctly - won't work at all), also new messages are not there and
support for UTF-8 server-side charset.

Roman