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Following are two columns of my database, I want to know what is the best collation/character set to be used if no special characters are expected. I expect special characters for FIRST_NAME but for DEPARTMENT I expect normal English characters.

Currently I have used utf8 for both but I do understand it can be performance overhead to use utf8 if not really required. I want to know what is the most efficient collation when VARCHAR is used for a field that expects normal english characters.

  USER_FIRST_NAME(100) CHARACTER SET 'utf8' COLLATE 'utf8_unicode_ci' DEFAULT NULL, 
  DEPARTMENT VARCHAR(100) CHARACTER SET 'utf8' COLLATE 'utf8_unicode_ci' DEFAULT NULL,
user4826347
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  • Frankly, I would be rather surprised to see a benchmark that showed any performance drop worth caring about on any real-world load from switching from Latin1 to UTF-8. Even the most marginal improvement in flexibility seems like it would at least equal the slight potential speed penalty. Still, hard data is at least worth gathering. – Nathan Tuggy Jun 05 '15 at 00:50
  • Thanks for your answer. – user4826347 Jun 05 '15 at 13:40

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