Hi,

I have some VARCHAR fields whose character set were incorrectly
defined as NONE. I would like to use ISO8859_1 instead.

I read on "The Firebird Book" that in order to do so you must add a
new temporary field, with the right character set, fill it with the data
from the original field ( using OCTECT as an intermediat chararacter set
) and finally drop and recreate the original field with the right
character set, filling it with the data that was stored in the temporary
field. The process ends up dropping the temporary field.

I wonder what is wrong with simply invoking "ALTER TABLE X ALTER
COLUMN Y TYPE CHAR(N) CHARACTER SET ISO8859_1"

Thanks in advance for any help.

Aldo Caruso