Why does MySql have 'utf8' for collation on its information_schema but latin1_swedish on all other databases?

Question

Using the latest version of MySql. I created a database, it defaulted to Latin1_Swedish, and just noticed that the 'mysql' database also has Latin1_Swedish. Only the information_schema has a collation of utf8_general_ci. Should I be changing my database to utf8? And if so, how?

Answer 1

There are a few options to change from the default latin1_swedish setting

You can compile mysql to have a default character set of utf8

make WITH_CHARSET=utf8 WITH_COLLATION=utf8_bin

You can change the defaults within the my.cnf file, or at runtime of the mysql server.

mysqld --character-set-server=utf8 --collation-server=utf8_bin;

You can also specify the characterset when creating your databases.

CREATE DATABASE dbname CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_bin;

Whether you should or not, is your call.

Here's some docs on the topic, which might be worth having a look through.