--- In firebird-support@yahoogroups.com, Paul Vinkenoog <paul@...> wrote:

>
> "Set names UTF8" is only a signal to Firebird; it doesn't force Windows to convert your keystrokes to UTF8.
>
> Try
>
> insert into fdb_categories(categorykey, categoryname, parentcategorykey) values(2, _iso8859_1 'Gemüse', 1);
>
> This usually works for me. ISO8859_1 is a single-byte set. When this arrives at the server *and* the server is told that it's ISO8859_1, it has no trouble converting it to UTF8. (And if it *does* have trouble, you can use an explicit cast.)
>
> Probably "set names iso8859_1" would also work, or "set names win1252". Then you won't have to use the introducer syntax every time you insert a non-ASCII character.
>

Hello,

the set name method doesn't work, the type casting one sort of works but when I view the values afterwards using IBExpert personal edition the german umlaut is several chars etc.

What I get out of this is, that ISQL is not UTF8 compatible? Is this the message? If I wanted to use singe byte codepages like in the past I would have used iso8859_1 in the first place avoiding all this trouble but I thought ok, when doing something new why not try to use UTF8 right from the start? Could it be that this creates more problems than it solves?

I'll create a smal test function in my Delphi XE application now to see what this and the used Firebird driver make out of it.

Best regards

Markus