How to migrate old data from mysql 3.25 to MySQL 4.1 which has to use UTF-8

[Nico Grubert]

Hi there,

I have 4 databases (~60 tables) and I use mysql 3.25.
Data have been inserted into MySQL tables via Web Forms which use 'ISO-8859-15' as site encoding.
Now I need to handle UTF-8 data. Since MySQL 3.xx does not support UTF-8 while MySQL 4.x does I want to update to MySQL 4.1 by setting up a new MySQL Server.

My questions are how to migrate old data from mysql 3.25 to MySQL 4.1 which has to use UTF-8 only since all webforms now use 'UTF-8' as site encoding.

1. Am I right, that I just need to tell the MySQL 4.1 server to run with UTF-8 character encoding and then I can import a SQL dump from MySQL 3.25? ...or do I need to convert the data in the SQL dump into utf-8 before I import the SQL dump from MySQL 3.25? If so, how can I do this?

2. Do I need to do anything in the SQL commands for inserting data from utf-8 encoded web forms?

3. Do I need to do anything in the SQL commands for reading data from MySQL to display on utf-8 encoded web sites?

Thank you very much in advance,
Nico