Question

I have just received an SQL insert script, but it fails on a duplicate key entry:

I am trying to insert :

1)Montaña

2)Montana

My tables are all utf8_spanish2_ci,

can anybody explain why this is happening ?

Answer 1

The utf8_spanish2_ci collation is indeed not only case insensitive, but also partly accent insensitive, so ñ = n. (as Joni Salonen points out, this is incorrect!) but á = a.

There is, as far as I know, no collation that does not come with this “feature” except utf8_bin.

What you can do:

• Use a binary collation for the table (this comes with other problems, though)
• Use a binary collation for the specific column (possibly your best bet)
• Use a different column as the key column – are you sure that column needs to be a unique key in the first place? If this is for a primary key, wouldn’t a numeric auto-increment be much better suited?