Hi Mark,
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"MESSAGE: Unknown initial character set index '255' received from server. Initial client character set can be forced via the 'characterEncoding' property."
This was because you were using an old version of Connector/J. You figured that out already.
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how to get a JDBC Driver for MySQL (Connector/J)
You can download Connector/J from the
MySQL Downloads page. I believe you figured that out too.
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Is there an easy way to correct all this or can we just fix the issue of using an older version of my java connector to MySQL?
No, you'll have to go through your code and fix all that is failing. You can still run Connector/J 5.1 but this is highly unrecommended since Connector/J 5.1 is EOL.
I'd suggest reading the
Connector/J documentation to get some guidelines regarding
upgrading Connector/J 5.1 to Connector/J 8.0.