Hello Jason, hello Stefan,

>>
>> What about TIB_Column.AsWideString?
>
> Not sure this would be a solution.

It would be the same as first getting the string as Utf8 and then
convert it to a WideString.

>
>> And if we need a UTF8 string, we could
>> add a method AsUtf8 to TIB_Column?!
>
> No need to do that.

Realy?

Delphi has an extry type for utf8 (it is defined as string, but an
extra type).

And an Utf8 String ist not the same as an AnsiString which is not the
same as a WideString.

>
> Just set TIB_Connection.CharSet to UTF-8 and then use AsRawString.

AsUtf8 would work independend from Connection.CharSet.
No need to know anything about it.

And one more aspect:
AsVariant should return a WideString for Utf8 or UnicodeFSS Char Columns.

Regards,
Andreas