Question

Does MySQL treat the default character setting in a cascading type of way?

For example, I’m looking at a script that generates the full db and it starts off with a statement like this:

CREATE SCHEMA IF NOT EXISTS `xyz` DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci ;

so does that imply that all tables that are created as part of this db will use the UTF8 charset by default? And if I wanted to use a different charset for a given table I would simply have to define it on the CREATE TABLE statement? Is that accurate? Can I override on a specific field of a specific table too? thanks!

Answer 1

Yes. If you set the charset and collation at the database (schema) level, it will apply to any newly created tables inside that database, unless those tables specify their own charset/collation in the CREATE TABLE statement.

And yes, you can also specify charset/collation on a per-field basis. Example from the MySQL manual:

CREATE TABLE t1
(
    col1 VARCHAR(5)
      CHARACTER SET latin1
      COLLATE latin1_german1_ci
);