On 27-11-2015 20:30, Helen Borrie helebor@...
[firebird-support] wrote:

> The -fix_fss_metadata switch needs an argument, which is the character
> set of any text data that is stored in your metadata, e.g., in CHECK
> constraints, triggers, stored procedures and such.
>
> If you know that such strings in the metadata are in the same character
> set as the default character set of the database, then use that
> character set as the argument. If you do not know the default character
> set, you can get it from the SHOW DATABASE command in isql, or from any
> other database tool that provides the header information; or you can
> query it from any DSQL tool:
>
> SELECT RDB$CHARACTER_SET_NAME FROM RDB$DATABASE
>
> Unfortunately, if the character set name is NONE, the -FIX... switches
> have no effect. In that case, you will have no choice but to recreate
> the database manually from a script - including the default character
> set parameter that is valid for your data! - and to pump the data into
> the new database.

It is not necessary to recreate the database. Instead you could take an
educated guess as to the character set to use. For example, in The
Netherlands (and the rest of Western Europe) it is likely WIN1252 or
ISO8859_1.

And even if you choose the wrong character set, the only effect -
assuming it is not a multibyte character set - is that you might have
some garbled text due to characters getting converted to the wrong
character, which might require additional fixing.

The most important thing though is to use -fix_fss_metadata only once!

Mark
--
Mark Rotteveel