Fabrice,

> I use triggers to maintain some columns uppercase:
> new.last_name = upper( new.last_name );
> The problem is, some characters are not uppercased, particularly the
> ä, ü, ö. For example:
>
> müller => MüLLER (sould be: MÜLLER)

You need the right collation order for this field assigned.

for ISO8859_1

create table customer (
...
last_name VARCHAR(40) COLLATE DE_DE,
);

for WIN1252:

create table customer (
...
last_name VARCHAR(40) COLLATE PXW_INTL850,
);

HTH

Luc.