> Main issue is the storage size of Unicode and UTF8. Since more

bytes are

> used per character, this means that you can have less characters in
> char/varchar fields, procedure parameter, indexes and for
> sorting/grouping operations. Consequently, some of your queries

that

> work with WIN1252 might fail with UTF8.

German characters mostly have ASCII < 7F. With UTF8 these characters
have the same storage size as in WIN1252, right?
Therefore a new database with default character set UTF8 should have
about the same size as the old WIN1252 database, right?

Isn't it correct that a field/parameter with varchar(50) always has
room for 50 characters (albeit some characters need more then one
byte)?

> Creating a new database and copying the data is as easy as:
>
> gbak -b -m database.fdb database.fbk
> gbak -c database.fbk new_database.fdb
> fbcopy se database.fdb new_database.fdb

With this methode the new database has the same character set as the
old one, right?
What would be best practice to get a new database with a different
default character set (UTF8)?