I have a database that is configured with CharSet = None.

My clients access it with CharSet = UTF8. I would not actually have know this if I hadn't started digging into this problem. My assumption was always that the clients were CharSet = None but something in the IBObjects component suite seems to change this to UTF8 when the database is opened. But that is a different issue.

Recently we started receiving data with non English characters. The data is stored into the database correctly. The data can be retrieved from the database correctly UNLESS I try concatenate a field with non English characters with other fields. Suppose the field CTE_CITY has a non English character. The following will fail with error 335544849 - 'malformed string'.

CTE_CITY || ',' || CTE_STATE

I can retrieve those fields into my program individually and concatenate them in the program with no problem.

Is this a bug or simply something I don't understand?

Thanks for you help