How to support full Unicode in MySQL databases

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It uses the old/previous MySQL utf8mb4 default collation, `utf8mb4_unicode_ci`; from MySQL 8.0 GA onwards, the new default is `utf8mb4_0900_ai_ci`.

Migrating between the two can't be done easily for an entire DB (migrating from utf8 is easy, instead), so those who happened to use the former collation by accident, and later decide to switch, are going have... interesting times.

as someone who's using old mysql (I can only use utf8), and we're getting our database upgraded, do you have any reference documentation for this? (is the type still utf8mb4 and only the collation is different?)

I wish character encoding was settled..

This is a thorough guide: https://saveriomiroddi.github.io/An-in-depth-dbas-guide-to-m...

The encoding/collation problem is now settled - the problem has been legacy, and especially, the somewhat mismanaged, rushed, change in 8.0.

This was a somewhat interesting problem for the emoji-only chat service "Emoj.li"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsyhGHUEt-k

(2012)

Still relevant in 2020.