Helen Borrie wrote:

>
>
>> (2) There seems to be a big difference between the maximum field
>> length of CHAR and VARCHAR fields for these character sets:
>>
>> UNICODE_FSS: 10921
>
> UNICODE_FSS stores all characters as exactly 3 bytes, even those that are shorter.

Actually, no. UNICODE_FSS stores every character in either 1, 2 or 3
bytes. The major *storage* difference between UNICODE_FSS and UTF8 is
that the latter allows up to 4 bytes per character, thus supporting the
latest Unicode specification. Other differences are correctly outlined
in your reply: well-formedness, collations, upper/lower etc.


Dmitry