Deciding Whether to Migrate MySQL Tables to UTF-8

If the string data to be stored in the existing MySQL tables will continue to be English, or a language that uses predominantly English/Latin characters with only a few non-English extended characters required, you do not need to migrate your database tables to UTF-8. This usually applies to the use of western European languages (such as German, French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, etc.). You can continue to use these tables in their original format with LNDB v1.2. MySQL has usually encoded these tables in the Latin1 character set, which is sufficient for storing the kind of string data used in these cases.

NOTE:

To determine exactly which characters are supported in legacy LNDB tables (i.e., without migrating them to UTF-8), refer to the section below entitled Windows Code Page 1252.

However, if you will begin requiring the storage of non-English (non-Latin-based) characters from languages such as Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Greek, Korean, and many other languages of the world into these legacy LNDB tables, they will require migration to the UTF-8 format.

When migrating your tables to UTF-8, you should carefully follow the migration process shown in the section below entitled Migrating Existing MySQL Tables to UTF-8. The migration process includes these main actions:

  • Performing a backup of the MySQL database.

  • Upgrading LoggerNet to a Unicode-enabled version (4.2 or later).

  • Upgrading LNDB to version 1.2 or later.

  • Installing a 32-bt, Unicode-enabled MySQL ODBC driver and configuring LNDB to use that driver.

  • Converting the LNDB tables in the MySQL database to UTF-8 (from Latin1, etc.). (Note that this step is performed within the LNDB Manager software.)

  • Modifying the datalogger programs to use UTF-8 characters, loading the programs into the dataloggers, and starting the programs.