>> Let's stop this discussion here - it is becoming to lengthy. :)
>
> I am of the opinion that changing the handling of unspecified
> charactersets in Jaybird is not without (significant) risk. I would
> like to
> propose a gradual change in the way Jaybird handles unspecified
> connection
> charactersets. The final goal would be to default to UTF-8 as the
> default
> characterset when no characterset is specified.

Agree.

> We could introduce this in Jaybird 2.3 as an optional default
> (requiring a
> Java system property to enable it). I would propose we also add
> warnings in
> the logs (and maybe a SQLWarning on the Connection, although most
> developers ignore those) when no explicit connection characterset is
> selected. This would really be required for the current behavior, but
> probably also a good idea for the new behavior.

I was thinking about warning as well, however that will be ignored :)
Maybe we should simply deny connection?

> This change would be explicitly mentioned in the releasenotes etc.
> For
> Jaybird 3.0 we switch this around: using UTF-8 as the default, people
> preferring the old way would need to explicitly specify the
> connection
> characterset as NONE. Optionally we may also need to allow for more
> control
> on how one specific connection converts the bytes received when
> connecting
> explicitly with NONE (eg to allow for conversion and fixes of data
> between
> two connections).

Yes, that is what I was thinking about.

Roman