i18n support in MySQL DB and MySQL client applications

[Hemant Ramnani]

Hi All,
I wanted to have an opinion on the following, is it a good practice to have the following options set in
the MySQL DB side (my.cnf file) when I am writing i18n applications and handle UTF8 data on the client side applications:

[mysqld]
init_connect='SET collation_connection = utf8_general_ci'
init_connect='SET NAMES utf8'
default-character-set=utf8
character-set-server = utf8
collation-server = utf8_general_ci

[mysql]
default-character-set=utf8

OR

DO NOT have the above settings in the "my.cnf" file, create databases everytime with a particular/specified character encoding and then have every client of the DB act accordingly.

I personally feel the former option is the way to go when writing i18n enabled applications against MySQL DB.

Comments would really be appreciated.

Thanks,
Hemant R.