There is a performance cost, and extra complexity in system configuration, when you use character set conversion. Choose a collation that avoids the need for character set conversion. Character set conversion is not used if the database server and client use the same character set.

You can avoid character set conversion by using a collation sequence in the database that matches the character set in use on your client computer operating system. In the case of Windows operating systems on the client computer, choose the ANSI character set.

If your client computers use a variety of characters sets, or if the database must store Unicode data, consider using the UCA and/or UTF8BIN collations. However, note that the UCA collation cannot be used with multibyte character sets other than UTF-8.

Choose a collation that uses a character set and sort order appropriate for the data in the database. It is often the case that there are several collations that meet this requirement.